1. Both Samuell Gorton, Sr., and his eldest son, spelled their first name with the double “L.”

2. “Beniamin Gorton Killed A woolfe And brought ye head & Skine to my house ye 21st day of December, 1674.”—[Unpublished Town Records, of Warwick.]

3. The site of the block-house has usually been placed on the North Side of the Mill Pond, at Old Warwick. Recent investigations, however, strongly favor the more natural site at Conimicut. I am told that Judge Brayton was convinced that this was the true location, before he died.

4. Notes to “Simplicities Defence against Seven-Headed Policie,” by Judge W.R. Staples, [R.I. Hist. Soc. Coll.]

Also “A Defence of Samuel Gorton,” By George A. Brayton, late Justice of the Supreme Court of Rhode Island. [Providence: Sidney S. Rider.]

5. Report on the Settlement of Warwick, 1642, and the Seal of the R.I. Historical Society, by William D. Ely and John P. Howland, (Proceedings, 1887-88,) and Report of the Committee on the Library, (Proceedings, 1890.)

6. Fuller’s “History of Warwick” also contains some sympathetic allusions to Gorton’s story. The Hon. William P. Sheffield, in an address before the R. I. Historical Society (1893), does him less than justice.

7. Mackie, et al. A letter of Gorton’s seems to fix this date with reasonable certainty as the year of his birth.

8. A Defence of Samuel Gorton and the Settlers of Shawomet, p. 5.

9. In a letter to Nathaniel Morton, Gorton says: “I was not bred up in the Schoole of humane learninge, and I bless God that I never was.”

10. Vide Mackie, and others. Gorton himself refers to his father as “a merchant of London,” which would possibly imply an earlier removal.

11. Calendar’s Historical Discourse, p. 9. I have not yet found this letter of Gorton’s in the original.

12. The fact that he subsequently returned and spent some time in London, unmolested, also militates against this charge.

13. 1636, O.S.

14. The trial of Wheelwright was in progress when Gorton arrived.

15. Under date of June 7, 1637, his name appears on the roll of a company of volunteers from Plymouth to aid Massachusetts in the Pequot war. He probably saw no service.

16. An early tradition, the origin of which I have not been able to trace, gives the name of Gorton’s wife as Elizabeth. In the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, (Vol. XLIV) however, there is a record of the bequest of Mary Mayplett, of London, widow, on Dec. 7, 1646, to her daughter, “Mary Gorton, wife of Samuell Gorton, being in New England,” of “all the money which her said husband Samuell doth owe me, and a breed of cattle which he hath of mine.” In a later volume (XLVI), there is a record of the will of “John Maplett, Doctor of Physicke, of the city of Bath, Somerset,” dated April 16, 1670, which contains the following clause: “I give and bequeath unto my dear sister, Mistress Mary Gorton, of New England, the sum of 20s., and to each of her children I give the sum of 10s. apiece.” Dr. John Maplett, the brother-in-law of Samuell Gorton, was eminent in letters as well as in medicine, having been for a time the Principal of Worcester College. (Vide Stevens’s Cyc. of Nat. Biography.) Samuell Gorton’s oldest child was a daughter named Mary, probably for her mother. His youngest daughter was named Elizabeth, but the late date of Dr. Maplett’s bequest to his sister Mary precludes the idea of a second marriage. There appear to have been at least two instances in the later history of the Gorton family of marriages between Samuells and Elizabeths, and it is probably from this that the confusion has arisen. I am indebted to Mr. Adelos Gorton, of Philadelphia, for important facts bearing on this question.

17. Winslow afterwards vaguely accused her of “having made some unworthy speeches and carriages.” (“Hypocrisy Unmasked”).

18. For an account of Gorton’s trial see Plymouth Colony Records, Vol. I, pp. 100, 105, under date “5 Nov. 1638.”

19. Vide Portsmouth Records, under date “Aprill the 30th, 1639.”

20. April 28, 1639, William Coddington was Governor, under the Royal Charter, from May, 1674, to May, 1676, and from Aug. 28, 1678, to Nov. 1 of the same year, dying in office.

21. March 12, 1640.

22. He is said to have characterized the magistrates as “just asses,” and to have called one of the witnesses a “jack-an-apes.” (See charges in Portsmouth Records). This occurred in August, 1640.

23. So Leckford (1641), Winthrop and Morton. Judge Staples questions this. Gorton himself refers to “fines, whippings and banishments out of their jurisdiction,” suffered by himself and friends. (Simplicities Defence). See also Edward Winslow’s “Hypocrisie Unmasked.”

24. For charges against Gorton see Portsmouth Town Records. There, also, under date “Mch. 16, 1642,” is a record of the banishment and disfranchisement of Wickes, Carder, Holden, Shotten and Potter; an action practically reversed on the 19th of the following September. (Portsmouth Records). They had already left Portsmouth before their official banishment.

25. There is reference to these controversies in Providence Records under date Nov. 17, 1641, in which Gorton’s name is mentioned.

26. There are strong reasons for questioning the authenticity of this letter.

27. This is admitted by Knowles, the biographer of Roger Williams. Arnold, certainly, had few sympathizers. None of the five “Disposers” of the town took part in this action.

28. The first deed of land beyond the Pawtuxet was made to John Greene, Oct. 1, 1642, and signed by Miantonomi and Soccononocco. The deed to Samuell Gorton and others, of the Shawomet lands bears date on the 12th of the following January (1642, O.S.).

29. The submission of Pomham and Soccononocco to Massachusetts bears date “June 22nd, 1643.”

30. Vide “Narragansett Historical Register,” Vol. I, pp. 16, 17, et seq.

31. Sept. 12, 1643.

32. Reply of Nowell and the Boston authorities to Gorton, vide “Simplicities Defence.”

33. “All ministers of the Gospel.” (Brayton.) The Providence men were Chad. Brown, Thomas Olney, William Field and William Wickenden. Sheffield says “Brown and Wickenden afterwards became clergymen.” (Samuell Gorton, p. 45).

34. Sheffield says “for several days.” (Address before R. I. Historical Society, February, 1893).

35. The invaders also took and sold eighty head of cattle belonging to Gorton and his friends.

36. A full account of this contest, with statements of both parties, appears in Gorton’s “Simplicities Defence,” (first ed., London, Aug. 3, 1646.) See also Winslow’s “Hypocrisie Unmasked.”

37. Gorton was at first ordered to formulate his answers “within fifteen minutes,” but on appeal was given until the next morning.

38. By two majority!

39. Gorton was taken to Boston as “prisoner of war,” Oct. 13, 1643. He was sentenced Nov. 3, 1643; released Mch. 7, 1643-44 (1643, O.S.).

40. History of New England, Vol. I.

41. Simplicities Defence against Seven Headed Policie.

42. The reference is to Mr. Cotton’s championship of Anne Hutchinson and the Antinomian heresy.

43. Williams probably sold his half of Prudence to obtain money to pay his expenses to England, when he went to make application for a charter. The purchase was in the name of a friend and co-partner of Winthrop, one Parker, a merchant of Boston.

44. The date ordinarily assigned to this patent, “Aug. 19, 1644,” must be erroneous. It was probably granted two years later, when Gorton was in England.

45. The manner in which the authorities of Massachusetts Bay recognized this safe-conduct was characteristic. Under date of “13th May, 1648,” the following entry appears in the Colonial Records: “Vppon the request of the Earle of Warwicke, the Court allowes Samuell Gorton, now a shipboard, one full weeke after the date hereof, for the transportatio of himselfe & his goods through or iurisdictio to the place of his dwelling, he demeaning himselfe inoffensively, accordinge to the contents of the Sd earle’s l’re, & that the marshals or some of them shall shew him a coppie of this order, or fix it to the maine mast of the shippe in which he is.”—Mass. Records, Vol. III, p. 127.

46. Warwick was not named in the Charter, as the town was not organized when it was granted; but it united with the other towns in 1647, in the first General Assembly of the entire Colony.

47. These were the names given the contesting parties of white men by the Indians. The latter, Roger Williams says, means “coat wearers,” which leads Dr. Fiske to query whether the Gortonists habitually went in their shirt sleeves!

48. Peage, or wampum, was legal tender in Rhode Island until 1662, and doubtless still passed current among the Indians. The bill of sale bears the name of Pomham’s son, but in its terms binds Pomham as well as his heirs.

49. The Charter of 1643-44 provided “that the laws, constitutions, punishments for the civil government of the said Plantation be conformable to the laws of England so far as the nature and constitution of that place would admit.”

50. Gorton’s legal acquirements were evidently superior to those of any other man in the Colony. He was one of the first Judges of the Colony.

51. Historical Records, Vol. I, p. 166.

52. William Arnold and the Pawtuxet malcontents.

53. Hazard’s State Papers, p. 555. Quoted in R.I. Colonial Records, Vol. I, p. 235.

54. Colonial Records (May 19, 1652).

55. John M. Mackie.

56. Vide “Certain Letters which Passed between the Penman of this Treatise and certain men newly come out of Old England into New.” By Samuell Gorton.

57. Colonial Records, 1658.

58. Ibid, 1665.

59. Records of the Town of Warwick (unpublished).

60. Greene’s Short History of Rhode Island, p. 76.

61. Unpublished Town Records.

62. Vide Austin’s Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island. See, also, unpublished Town Records of Warwick.

63. Massachusetts Records, Vol. II, p. 51.

64. History of Rhode Island. By Samuel G. Arnold.

65. Ibid.

66. This is substantially the conclusion of Judge Brayton. (Defence of Samuel Gorton).

67. That Gorton believed in civil government also clearly appears in his correspondence relating to the Quakers, where he expressly dissents from their views about government.

68. Vide Nowell, Rawson, Winthrop, Winslow, Morton, et al.

69. “The Father was never knowne nor is he knowable but in Christ.” (Commentary on the Lord’s Prayer).

70. The quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are from Gorton’s unpublished Commentary on the Lord’s Prayer. (Commentary, p. 101).

71. “Though no church was formed in connection with his ministrations, he exercised a powerful influence upon the religious views of the Colony.” History of Warwick, p. 301. By Orris Payson Fuller, B.A.

72. He also differed with the Friends of his day in his views about government.

73. This is strongly emphasized in his Commentary on the Lord’s Prayer.

74. Commentary Mss., p. 11. See, also, p. 14, et seq., as well as “Simplicities Defence,” (R. I. Hist. Soc. Ed.) page 183.

75. Commentary Mss., page 57.

76. Dr. Fiske is in error in classing him as a follower of Anne Hutchinson. His theology was original and peculiarly his own. (Commentary Mss., p. 58).

77. Commentary Mss., p. 90.

78. It is hardly necessary to say that neither Gorton or Parker held this doctrine in any materialistic sense. It was a lofty philosophical conception that the entire creative energy was expressed in the divine nature, to conceive which as purely masculine was inadequate, anthropomorphic and irrational.

79. The first charge against Roger Williams, on which he was banished from Massachusetts Bay, accused him of teaching “That wee have not our land by Pattent from the King, but that the natives are the true owners of it and that wee ought to repent of such receiving it by Pattent.” Gorton agreed with Williams as to the necessity of purchase from the Indians, but thought the charter also necessary.

80. John M. Mackie, in “Sparks’s American Biography.”

Samuel Eddy, Secretary of State of Rhode Island, circum 1820, says of Gorton: “From the first establishment of the government he was almost constantly in office, and during a long life there is no instance of record to my knowledge of any reproach or censure cast upon him, no complaint of him, although history furnishes abundance of evidence that there were no lack of enemies to his person, principles, or property. This can hardly be said of any other settler of the Colony of any standing.” Quoted in Judge Brayton’s “Defence of Samuel Gorton.”

81. Vide Winthrop’s Letters, the Portsmouth charges, etc.

82. The eldest daughter, Mary, married, i. Peter Greene; ii. John Sanford; the youngest, Elizabeth, married John Crandall; Sarah married William Mace; Ann’s husband was John Warner; Susanna’s was Benjamin Barton. From these marriages have sprung many well known Rhode Island families.

83. The Colonial Assembly of 1647 provided “that the seale of the Province shall be an anchor.”