of water, was inhabited by "poor despised peasants," as
Governor Brenton described them, "living remote in the woods" and
subject to the "envious and subtle contrivances of our neighbour
colonies round about us, who are in a combination united together to
swallow us up." The colony had not been asked to join the New England
Confederation, and its leaders were convinced that the members of the
Confederation were in league to filch away their lands and, by driving
them into the sea, to eliminate the colony altogether. Plymouth, seeking
a better harbor than that of Plymouth Bay, claimed the eastern mainland
as well as the chief islands, Hog, Conanicut, and Aquidneck;
Massachusetts claimed Pawtuxet, Warwick, and the Narragansett country
generally; while Connecticut wished to push her eastern boundary as far
beyond the Pawcatuck River (the present boundary) as she might be able
to do. Had each of these colonies made good its claim, there would have
been little left of Rhode Island, and we do not wonder that the settlers
looked upon themselves as fighting, with their backs to the sea, for
their very existence. Hence they welcomed the charter with the joy of
one relieved of a great burden, for, though the boundary question
remained unsettled, the charter assured the colony of its right to exist
under royal protection.

FOOTNOTE:

[2] The King's warrant was issued on February 28, the writ of Privy Seal
on April 23, and the great seal was affixed on May 10, 1662.

CHAPTER VII

MASSACHUSETTS DEFIANT

Massachusetts was yet to be taken in hand. The English authorities had
become convinced that a satisfactory settlement of all the difficulties
in New England could be undertaken not in England, where the facts were
hard to get at, but in America. Lord Clarendon, the Chancellor, had been
in correspondence with Samuel Maverick, an early settler in New England
and for many years a resident of Boston and New Amsterdam. As an
Anglican, Maverick had sympathized with the opposition in Massachusetts
led by Dr. Robert Child, and had been debarred from all civil and
religious rights in the colony; but he was a man of sobriety and good
judgment, whose chief cause of offense was a difference of opinion as to
how a colony should conduct its government. The fact that he had been
able to get on with the Massachusetts men shows that his attitude had
never been seriously aggressive, for though he certainly had no liking
for the policy