During the succeeding quarter of a century Samuell Gorton was active and influential in shaping the destinies of the growing State. He occupied the highest places of honor and responsibility at the gift of his fellow-citizens, and was habitually called into service when sound judgment, prompt and courageous action, and literary ability were requisite. He represented Portsmouth in the Assembly at Newport in 1645. He was chosen one of the Commissioners of the town of Warwick to the General Assembly on his return 60from England, and served therein a greater part of the time for the next two or three decades. He was placed on the most important committees, and his pen was frequently called into requisition to prepare State papers, and letters to the magistrates of other Colonies, and to the representatives of the new Commonwealth in England. Though absent in the Mother Country during the first year of Colonial Government under the charter of 1643-44, his political views were embodied in the remarkable Code of 1647, passed by the first General Assembly of the United Colony, one of the earliest compilations of law in American history. In the construction of this Code, care was taken to avoid the errors of which Gorton had complained, in the judicial procedure of the other Colonies, by making each section conform to existing 61English law,[49] reference to the corresponding English statute being placed at the end thereof.[50]

The provision respecting witchcraft is especially noteworthy as indicating a prevailing scepticism in Rhode Island at a time when Massachusetts was under the spell of the delusion, soon to break forth in an appalling epidemic of persecution. The object of its introduction is evidently the set purpose of conforming to English precedents rather than a conviction of the legislators that the statute was demanded by any real public necessity. The section reads:

62“Witchcraft is forbidden by this present Assembly to be used in this Colonie; and the Penaltie imposed by the authoritie that wee are subjected to, is felonie of death.—I Jac. 12.”[51] The Code of 1647 also forbade imprisonment for debt, and is otherwise in advance of most contemporary legislation. The temper of the Colony on the subject of witchcraft is still further evidenced in the testimony of their opponents,[52] who complained in an anonymous letter addressed to the agent of Massachusetts in England a few years later, that the new government was ignoring the English law. This epistle especially stigmatized “some of them at Shawomet that cryeth out much against them that putteth people to death for witches, for they say there be no other 63witches upon earth, nor devils, but your own pasters and ministers, such as they are.”[53] There was apparently never a prosecution in Rhode Island under the statute against witchcraft.

Samuell Gorton’s literary style is clearly evident in the remarkable statute against negro slavery, passed by the General Assembly in 1652—the first legislative edict of emancipation ever adopted in America. This statute was passed during the Coddington secession of 1651-54, and consequently voices officially only the sentiment of Providence and Warwick. Roger Williams was in England at the time of its passage, and there can be little doubt that Samuell Gorton was its author and principal advocate. Though it subsequently became 64a dead letter, it was apparently never repealed, and merits perpetuation in the annals of the anti-slavery conflict. It reads as follows:

“Whereas there is a common course practised amongst English men to buy negers, to the end that they may have them for service or slaves forever; for the preventinge of such practices among us, let it bee ordered, that no blacke mankinde or white, being forced by covenant bond or otherwise, to serve any man or his assigns longer than ten yeares, or untill they come to bee twentie four yeares of age if they bee taken in under fourteen, from the time of their cominge within the liberties of this Collonie. And at the end or terme of ten yeares to sett them free as the manner is with the English servants. And that man that will not let them goe free, or 65shall sell them away elsewhere to that end that they may bee enslaved to others for a long time, hee or they shall forfeit to the Colonie forty pounds.”[54]

Samuell Gorton was elected General Assistant, a position corresponding with that of Lieutenant Governor, in 1649, and in 1651, during the Coddington secession, he was chosen to the highest position at the gift of the Commonwealth—he became its President. During the following year, he was Moderator or Speaker of the General Assembly, and he several times subsequently served as General Assistant. He was also active in the affairs of the Town of Warwick, being for many years a member of the Town Council, and holding other positions of honor and responsibility. “After the venerable founder of Providence,” 66says his biographer,[55] “no man was more instrumental in establishing the foundations of equal civil rights and ‘soul liberty’ in Rhode Island than Samuell Gorton.” He was especially active in assuring the protection of the Colony for the persecuted Quakers.[56] He sent them messages of sympathy when they were in prison in Massachusetts, and was authorized by the General Assembly to reply to the epistles of the Massachusetts authorities protesting against their finding an asylum in Rhode Island. When Massachusetts appealed to England, Samuell Gorton was designated to prepare a letter on behalf of the Rhode Island Government to John Clarke, the representative 67of the Colony in the Mother Country, to be presented to the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. He requests Clarke “to plead our case in such sorte as wee may not bee compelled to exercise any civill power over men’s consciences, so long as humane orders in poynt of civility are not corrupted and voyalated, which our neighbors aboute us doe frequently practise, whereof many of us have large experience, and doe judge it to bee no less than a poynt of absolute crueltie.”[57]

On the collapse of the Puritan Commonwealth in England, Samuell Gorton was appointed on a Committee to select agents of the Colony in England, and prepare an address to his Majesty, King Charles the Second.[58] As a result of 68this action, and of the wise intercession of John Clarke, then representing the Colony in England, the Charter of 1663 was secured, in which Samuell Gorton was named as one of the incorporators of the new Commonwealth. In 1663 he was also appointed by the Town Council “overseer” of the will of John Smith, Deputy from Warwick, under the curious provision by which the towns in Rhode Island made wills for persons dying intestate, dividing their property according to the communal sense of justice. In 1666, after the purchase of Pomham’s claim, Mr. Gorton was assigned ten shares in Warwick Neck, and was still further recognized in another division in the following year.[59] In 1675, during the storm and stress of King Philip’s war, tradition says that 69Samuell Gorton’s life was saved by friendly Indians, who rowed him across the Bay to a place of safety. He was always on amicable terms with the aborigines, treating them justly, teaching and exhorting in their settlements, and wisely advising them in various emergencies.

Warwick suffered severely in the contest with King Philip, which would doubtless have been prevented had the policy of Roger Williams and Samuell Gorton in dealing with the Indians been generally adopted. The town was depopulated, the houses and barns were burned, and the cattle driven into the wilderness. A pitched battle was fought in an open cedar swamp in Warwick between the Indians under Canonchet and a company of men from Plymouth.[60] 70Many of the colonists took refuge on Aquidneck, the waters around which were patrolled night and day by a flotilla of four boats, filled with armed men.

Judge Staples tells us that John Wickes, the friend and colleague of Samuell Gorton, trusting too implicitly to the friendship of the savages, remained and was slain; his head being set upon a pole as a warning to others. In this, he must be mistaken, however, since the will of John Wickes, dated the second day of March, 1688, and signed by himself, though written and witnessed by Samuell Gorton, the younger, may be seen to-day in the library of the Historical Society in Providence. This interesting document also contains the signatures of two others of the founders, of Warwick,—Randall Holden, the justice before whom it was proved, and 71John Greene, who signs in behalf of himself and the other members of the Town Council.

On the fourth day of June, 1677, probably the year of his death, Samuell Gorton, Senior, was elected “to the Towne Counsell for the ensuing yeare,” as the ancient records tell us, and his son, Capt. Samuell Gorton, was at the same time chosen Town Treasurer. On the 20th of July the father signed a deed of lands owned by him in the Narragansett Country to his sons, his six daughters and their husbands also being remembered in the disposition of this property; and on the 27th of November of the same year, by another deed, he divided his entire remaining estate among his three sons, Samuell, John and Benjamin.[61] To the former, who was 72evidently a man after his own heart, and who had aided in supporting the family, he gave his homestead at Old Warwick, his household furniture, library and most precious literary possessions. He also committed to him the care of his mother during her widow-hood, providing that she should be maintained with convenient housing and necessaries, and that means should be furnished for her “recreation in case she desires to visit her friends.”[62] His lands at Coweset, beyond the boundaries of the Shawomet grant, he gave in equal possession, undivided, to his three sons. The document attesting the final division of these lands by the surviving sons, Samuell and John, bears date on the town records, Dec. 4, 731699, being executed, as it says, “according to the expressed wish of our Ancient and Honored ffather, Mr. Samuell Gorton, one of the first settlers of this Plantation of Warwick in New England.” His son Benjamin, then deceased, had been one of the founders of the new town of East Greenwich, the organization of which dates from the year of the original bequest.