INDIANS STILL TROUBLESOME.—CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE.—TROUBLES CONCERNING THE BOUNDARY LINES.

War was followed by pestilence, which moves so fatally in her train. Of this pestilence we only know that it ran its deadly course in two or three days, and left its traces in almost every family. Meanwhile the legislature was sedulously repairing the breaches of the war. Laws passed in order to meet an urgent want were repealed, and chief among them as most repugnant to the tolerant spirit of the Colony the law of military service. The farmers returned to their desolate fields—citizens to the ruins of their hamlets. “Give us peace,” they may have said, “and we will efface the traces of these ruins.”

But it was long before real peace returned. The Indians though subdued were still turbulent. Active measures were required to prevent them from passing on and off the Island at will, and building their wigwams and mat-sheds on the commons and even on private lands. Rumsellers were found ready to sell them rum, and at Providence parties were sent out to scour the woods and guard against surprises. As an encouragement to the men engaged in these duties their wounded were nursed at public expense. There was more serious danger from another quarter. Connecticut had not renounced her designs against Rhode Island territory, nor was she slow in declaring her intentions. The first step was an order of the Council at Hartford forbidding every one, whether white man or Indian, to occupy any lands in Narragansett without its consent. The Assembly met this order by a counter prohibition. No jurisdiction was to be exercised there but that of Rhode Island.

This declaration of claims was promptly followed by action. Three planters who had returned to their plantations in Warwick were seized by the Connecticut authorities and sent to Hartford. They appealed to their own Governor, Governor Clarke for protection. One of the most important measures of the Rhode Island government was the reËstablishment of King’s Province. Full power of protection was conferred upon a court of justices to be held in Narragansett. No one was allowed to enter the Province without permission from the Assembly. Ten thousand acres of land were set apart for new settlers at the rate of a hundred acres to each man—the new settlers to be approved by the Assembly. Rhode Island threatened to appeal to the King. Connecticut declared that she was ready to meet the appeal. Attempts at compromise were made by both parties. Connecticut proposed to fix the line at Coweset, the modern East Greenwich. Rhode Island offered to allow Connecticut to dispose of half the unpurchased lands in the Province if the settlers would accept the jurisdiction of Rhode Island. The loss of King’s Province would have imperilled the future independence of Rhode Island, and therewith the great principle on which it was founded. Connecticut could not renounce her last hope of securing a part of Narragansett Bay. Neither offer was accepted, and it soon became evident that no decision could be reached except by appeal to the King. Peleg Sandford and Richard Bailey were chosen agents, and two hundred and fifty pounds voted for their expenses. The money was to be raised by the sale of ten thousand acres of lands in Narragansett at the rate of a shilling an acre.

Meanwhile the Assembly was very active. A party change took place at the election of 1677—Governor Arnold was chosen in place of Governor Clarke. This was equivalent to a triumph of the war party. The militia law was again revised, care still being taken to protect the rights of conscience. How jealously these were guarded appears also in the unwillingness to multiply oaths of office. Five years before an act had been passed requiring deputies to take an engagement on entering upon the duties of their office. This law met with great opposition at its original passage, and its repeal was hailed with general satisfaction. Every freeman, it was said, made an engagement of allegiance on receiving the rights of citizenship. An oath is too solemn a thing to be lightly taken—why should we use it? So reasoned those conscientious men. By another act, also, they showed how fast they held to this fundamental principle.

Another sect, the Sabbatarians or Seventh-Day Baptists, had taken root and begun to flourish in the free air of Rhode Island. In 1667 they were sufficiently numerous to justify them in asking that market day might be changed from Saturday, their Sabbath, to some other day. Without breaking in upon an old custom by changing the day, the Assembly added Thursday as another market day and thus quieted the scruples of honest and useful citizens.

We have seen how promptly and firmly the Assembly met the encroachments of Connecticut. Their remonstrances were followed up by spirited and judicious action. The surest way to strengthen their hold upon the disputed territory was by peopling it. Among the coves and inlets which give such quiet beauty to Narragansett Bay there is none more beautiful than that broad sheet of navigable water which still retains in part its original name of Coweset. Here it was resolved to plant a colony and build a town. Five hundred acres were set apart in lots on the bay for house lots—four thousand five hundred in farms of ninety acres, which were distributed among fifty men on condition of building within a year and opening roads from the bay into the country. To guard against rash speculation no colonist was to sell his land within twenty-one years unless with the consent of the Assembly. Thus on the verdant hill-side at whose foot a ripple from the Atlantic mingles with the inland murmur of Mascachugh was built the pleasant hamlet of East Greenwich.

Another bitter controversy arose concerning the limits and extent of the original Providence and Pawtuxet purchase—a question of great local interest, and which lost none of its heat from having for opposite leaders Roger Williams and William Harris. Several difficult questions were mixed up with it, greatly disturbing the harmony of the northern section of the Colony. Williams had shown himself to be an inaccurate conveyancer in the drafting of the original deed. This was purely a question of title. A still more difficult one arose when Warwick was colonized. Agents were sent to England to ask for the appointment of commissioners to decide the controversies which the local tribunals were unable to decide effectually. John Greene and Randall Holden were the agents for Warwick; William Harris for Pawtuxet. This William Harris, as we have already seen, was a bold thinker and an energetic actor. He made several voyages to England in defence of his party, and followed up with great energy every advantage that he gained before the tribunals at home. On his last voyage he fell into the hands of Barbary corsairs, and though ransomed after a year of captivity died soon after his redemption. The controversy did not cease with his death. Other voyages were made to England and other decisions obtained. But it was not till many years later that the unwise contest was settled. Then, in 1696, the line between Providence and Warwick was settled by the Assembly, with the Pawtuxet River for boundary. That between Providence and Pawtuxet was continued till 1712 and then settled by compromise.