1651.]

PUNISHMENT OF OBADIAH HOLMES.

opposition to

111 tans of Massachusetts, candid and truthful history can neither wink out of sight nor palliate the intolerance and cruelty which The spirit of they visited upon those who differed from them. Fortunately puritan infor her, and for the whole country whose destiny she has tolerance. done so much to influence, the efforts of her earliest rulers to stamp her character with the indelible impress of their own narrow views and purposes were not successful. In all those years there was among the common people, particularly outside of Boston, a determined purpose, which it was impossible altogether to suppress, not to submit to the arbitrary will and narrow fanaticism with which the magistrates proposed to govern in the name of religion and of law. The struggle was long continued, continued, indeed, even down to our own time. But that spirit which led some of the most enlightened of her people to build up another colony on a foundation of religious toleration and the equal civil rights of all men, has, in the long run, been triumphant in Massachusetts also. The extravagancies in theological discursiveness which grew out of the intellectual and religious activity of the age came, in the end, to harmless and sometimes rational conclusions; while the intolerant bigotry which knew no better way to meet the vagaries of fanaticism than persecution became at length so intolerable to all sober-minded people as to be looked upon with such abhorrence as to defeat itself.

Codding

mission for

Rhode Isl

and.

It is not at all impossible that these outrages in Boston upon two well-known clergymen of Rhode Island may have had some influence upon political events in that colony. Governor ton's ComCoddington had, by a clever coup de main, obtained from the Council of State in England a commission to govern Rhode Island, with a council of six men, during his life. With this commission he returned home about the time of the visit of Clark to Massachusetts; and though there is no evidence of his having repeated his overtures to the Commissioners of the United Colonies that Rhode Island should be admitted to that Confederacy, there was, nevertheless, a good deal of alarm among the people at his success. Roger Williams, as representative of the mainland towns, and John Clark, on behalf of those of the Island, were sent soon after to England, the one to procure the recall of the commission to Coddington, the other to obtain a confirmation of the charter. The latter was probably thought desirable, as since that charter was granted Charles the First had been brought to the block, England had been declared a Commonwealth, and the government of the nation entrusted to the Council of State appointed by parliament. The mission of the commissioners, however, was, in effect, the same to restore the government of Providence Plantations, which had lapsed through the dis

sensions of the several towns, and the repeal of the appointment of Coddington as governor for life over those of Rhode Island.

The mission was successful. Williams and Clark presented their petition to the Council of State the following spring; in the autumn of 1652 the commission to Coddington was recalled, and a few months later the towns were again united under one government, Williams, who had meanwhile returned from England, being the first gov

ernor.

Rhode Isl

Clark remained in England to watch over, during the next ten momentous years of the Commonwealth, the interests of the and charter Colony. On the restoration of Charles II. he devoted himself to obtaining a royal charter, which was granted in July, 1663, to the Colony under the new name of Rhode Island and Prov

of 1663.

idence Plantations." All the rights granted in the earlier patent were confirmed in this; the original title of the native Indians for affirming which as to the country of New England Roger Williams was, among other reasons, banished from Massachusetts- was reccognized; the rights of conscience and of private judgment, for which the people of Rhode Island had suffered so much at the hands of their neighbors, were affirmed by the declaration that "no person within the said Colony, at any time hereafter, shall be anywise molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question, for any differences in opinion in matters of religion, that do not actually disturb the civil peace of our said Colony; but that all and every person and persons may, from time to time, and at all times hereafter, freely and fully have and enjoy his and their own judgments and consciences, in matters of religious concernments, throughout the tract of land hereafter mentioned; they behaving themselves peaceably and quietly, and not using this liberty to licentiousness and profaneness, nor to the injury or outward disturbance of others"; it empowered a general assembly "to make, ordain, constitute

1663.]

THE CHARTER OF 1663.

113

or repeal, such laws, statutes, orders and ordinances, forms and ceremonies of government and magistracy, as to them shall seem meet, for the good and welfare of the said Company, and for the government and ordering of the lands and hereditaments hereinafter mentioned to be granted, and of the people that do, or at any time hereafter shall, inhabit or be within the same; so as such laws, ordinances and constitutions, so made, be not contrary and repugnant unto, but as near as may, agreeable to the laws of this our realm of England, considering the nature and constitution of the place and people there"; that in all matters of public controversy between this and other colonies the appeal should be to the government in England, and that to the inhabitants of Rhode Island there should be perfect freedom to pass and repass without let or molestation into the other colonies, and to hold intercourse and trade with such of their people as were willing, "any act, clause, or sentence in any of the said Colonies, provided, or that shall be provided, to the contrary in any wise notwithstanding." This, no doubt, referred to the sentence of banishment of Roger Williams and others from Massachusetts which had never been repealed.

No charter so comprehensive and so radical as this had ever before been granted to any English colony. It guaranteed to the Its characpeople of Rhode Island those great principles of civil and ter. religious liberty for which they had struggled so long and some of them had sacrificed so much; it anticipated in a royal grant the fundamental law of that great republic of which this colony is a part, but which was waited for till more than another century of growth and struggle had passed away; and so broad and free it was that it served as the constitution of that little commonwealth for the next

hundred and eighty years. Under it Benedict Arnold was the first governor; among the names of those on whose behalf the king was petitioned that such a patent be granted, were those of Samuel Gorton, John Greene, Randall Holden, and William Coddington; 1 and the man to whom it owed its character and at whose importunity the royal will was chiefly moved, was Dr. John Clark, who two years before barely escaped the whipping-post in Boston, where the magistrates were not ashamed to condemn to a punishment so ignominious a venerable and estimable and learned clergyman whose offence was one that this charter forbade to be called a crime, and maintained as

1 Those on whose behalf John Clark petitioned the king were: Benjamin Arnold, William Brenton, William Coddington, Nicholas Easton, William Baulston, John Porter, John Smith, Samuel Gorton, John Weeks, Roger Williams, Thomas Olney, Gregory Dexter, John Coggeshall, Joseph Clarke, Randall Holden, John Greene, John Roome, Samuel Wildbore, William Field, James Barker, Richard Tew, Thomas Harris, and William Dyre.

a precious right. As an historical document the instrument is full of the gravest interest for the incidents and the men whose memory it preserves; for the events in the formation of governments of which it was, in a certain measure, a prophecy; and for the end which awaited it when nearly two centuries later its form though not its spirit was outgrown.

CHAPTER VI.

NEW NETHERLAND UNDER PETER STUYVESANT.

STUYVESANT'S ARRIVAL AT MANHATTAN. - HOPEFUL RECEPTION BY THE CITIZENS.HE BEFRIENDS EX-GOVERNOR KIEFT. ARREST AND TRIAL OF KUYTER AND MELYN. THEIR BANISHMENT AND DEPARTURE WITH KIEFT.-WRECK OF THE PRINCESS. DIFFICULTIES WITH NEW ENGLAND. SEIZURE OF THE ST. BENINIO. THE CONSEQUENT QUARREL WITH NEW HAVEN.- CONTROVERSY WITH THE COM MISSARY OF RENSSELAERSWYCK. DISCONTENT OF THE PEOPLE. APPEAL OF THE CITIZENS TO HOLLAND. MELYN'S RETURN. - REVERSAL OF HIS SENTENCE. THE REMONSTRANCE FORWARDED TO THE STATES-GENERAL. VAN DER DONCK AND THE DELEGATES AT THE HAGUE. STUYVESANT'S CONTINUED ARROGANCE.

Governor

arrival at

May, 1647.

ON the 27th of May, 1647, Peter Stuyvesant, the new governor who, the New Netherlanders hoped, had come to remedy all the evils which they had suffered under the administration Stuyvesant's of Kieft, arrived amid "shouting on all sides" and the burn- Manhattan, ing of nearly all the powder in the town in salutes.1 The rejoicing was universal, and even Kieft himself was glad, probably, to welcome a successor who was to release him from the cares of a vexatious office. As the excited burghers gathered near the fort upon what is now known as the Battery, to look at the fleet anchored in the harbor, they congratulated each other, no doubt, that an era of peace, prosperity, and equitable rule had come at last.

The burghers forgot for the moment, if they had ever heard, that the reputation of the new governor was not altogether un- His previous sullied. It is said that in Holland he had been detected in career. robbing the daughter of his host, and that he would have been punished for the act had he not been mercifully forgiven for the sake of his father, who was a clergyman in Vriesland, and greatly esteemed. The famous expedition against St. Martin, where Stuyvesant lost his leg-in place of which he ever after wore a wooden one, bound together with rings of silver, and therefore called his "silver leg,"— this expedition, it was said, was unsuccessful because it was so badly con1 So extravagant was this demonstration of welcome "that they were obliged to send to another place to buy powder for exercising and in case of need.”. The Breeden Raedt. Extracts translated in Documentary History of New York, vol. iv.,

p. 69.