Samuel Gorton--Champion of Civil Rights

 

Samuel Gorton (1593–1677) was an early settler and civic leader of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations and President of the towns of Providence and Warwick. He had strong religious beliefs which differed from Puritan theology and was very outspoken, and he became the leader of a small sect of converts known as Gortonians, Gortonists or Gortonites. As a result, he was frequently in trouble with the civil and church authorities in the New England colonies.

Gorton was baptized in 1593 in Manchester, Lancashire, England and received an education in languages and English law from tutors. In 1637, he emigrated from England, settling first in Plymouth Colony, where he was soon ousted for his religious opinions and his demeanor towards the magistrates and ministers. He settled next in Portsmouth where he met with a similar fate, being whipped for his insubordination towards the magistrates. He next went to Providence Plantation where he once again encountered adverse circumstances, until he and a group of others purchased land from the Narragansett people. They settled south of the Pawtuxet River in an area which they called Shawomet.

Gorton refused to answer a summons following the complaints of two Indian sachems about being unfairly treated in a land transaction. He and several of his followers were forcefully taken away to Massachusetts, where he was tried for his beliefs and writings rather than for the alleged land transaction. He was sentenced to prison in Charlestown, though all but three of the presiding magistrates voted to give him the death sentence.

After being released, Gorton and two of his associates sailed to England where they obtained an official order of protection for his colony from the Earl of Warwick. During his stay in England, he was also very active in the Puritan underground, preaching in churches and conventicles known for their extreme religious positions. Once back in New England, he changed the name of Shawomet to Warwick in gratitude to his patron in England. He became part of the very civil authority which he had previously rejected, serving as an assistant, commissioner, deputy, and president of the two towns of Providence and Warwick.

He wrote a number of books, two of them while in England and several others following his return. He was a man of great learning and great intellectual breadth, and he believed passionately in God, the King, and the individual man, and he was harshly critical of the magistrates and ministers who filled positions that he considered meaningless. His beliefs and demeanor brought him admiration from his followers but condemnation from those in positions of authority, and he was reviled for more than a century after his death. In more recent times, some historians and writers have looked upon him more favorably, and some now consider him to be one of the great colonial leaders of Rhode Island.   

Gorton left a comfortable life in England to enjoy liberty of conscience in the English colonies of North America.^[9] According to Rhode Island historian Thomas Bicknell, he was a man of intense individualism who recognized three pillars of power: "God, the Supreme One; the King, his vicegerent; and himself, the individual man. Between these he recognized no other source of authority. The freedom of the individual was only limited by the express will of God or the King."^[35] He and his followers held that "by union with Christ, believers partook of the perfection of God, that Christ is both human and divine, and that Heaven and Hell exist only in the mind."^[35]

Gorton's house built after King Philip's War

The following are some of the activities for which he and his followers were imprisoned, whipped, put to hard labor, and banished, and had their cattle, food, and property confiscated:

• teaching that heaven and hell were states existing in the hearts of men and women, rather than a material place where people reside in an afterlife
• teaching that the baptism of infants would not save a baby's soul, since babies had no capacity to understand or accept the concepts of Christianity (a position also held by Baptists)
• teaching that the ministers and magistrates should not be the sole or ultimate authorities of how biblical interpretations were enforced with criminal laws
• teaching that God is a unity rather than a trinity
• objecting to the mandatory paying of tithes to a state church, and mandatory attendance, since salvation came through individual faith freely chosen, and not from conformity to denominational creeds and ritual^[36]

In his day, Gorton was largely reviled by those who were not his followers, and his insolence towards colonial leaders made him the butt of most early writers of Rhode Island's colonial history.^[37] Nathaniel Morton was the keeper of the Plymouth records for years, and he published a "libellous and scandalous" book about Gorton while he was still alive.^[38] On 30 June 1669, Gorton wrote a lengthy letter of denial, refuting virtually every point made by Morton.^[39] More than a century later, however, Rhode Island Secretary of State Samuel Eddy wrote, "In the case of Gorton... no one of the first settlers has received more unmerited reproach, nor any one suffered so much injustice. His opinions on religious subjects were probably somewhat singular, though certainly not more so than in any at this day. But that was his business; his opinions were his own and he had a right to them."^[37] Later, Rhode Island historian and Lieutenant Governor Samuel G. Arnold wrote of Gorton: 

He was one of the most remarkable men that ever lived. His career furnishes an apt illustration of the radicalism in action, which may spring from ultra-conservatism in theory. The turbulence of his earlier history was the result of a disregard for existing law, because it was not based upon what he held to be the only legitimate source of power—the assent of the supreme authority in England. He denied the right of a people to self-government, and contended for his views with the vigor of an unrivalled intellect and the strength of an ungoverned passion. But when this point was conceded, by the securing of a Patent, no man was more submissive to delegated law. His astuteness of mind and his Biblical learning made him a formidable opponent of the Puritan hierarchy, while his ardent love of liberty, when it was once guaranteed, caused him to embrace with fervor the principles that gave origin to Rhode Island.^[40]

— Lieutenant Governor Samuel G. Arnold

Gorton was described as being gentle and sympathetic in private intercourse, and generous and sympathetic in nature. He gave to others the same liberty of thought and expression that he claimed for himself.^[41] One of his biographers wrote that, after Roger Williams, no man was more instrumental in establishing the foundation of equal civil rights and liberty in Rhode Island.^[42] Puritan scholar Philip Gura sees him as "not a dangerous and immoral troublemaker but rather a man who, more than any other New Englander, was in step with the religious politics of his times and whose history illuminates the complexity of the relationship of American to English Puritanism." Wikipedia