rnment,
denied the legality of its land title as derived from the King, and
contested the right of the magistrates to deal with matters
ecclesiastical. Making his way through the wilderness in the winter of
1635-1636, he finally settled on the Mooshassuc River, calling the place
Providence; and in the ensuing two years he gathered about him a number
of those who found the church system of Massachusetts intolerable and
the Erastian doctrines of the magistrates, according to which the sins
of believers were to be punished by civil authority, distressing to
their consciences. They drew up a plantation covenant, promising to
subject themselves "in active or passive obedience to all such orders or
agreements" as might be made for the public good in an orderly way by
the majority vote of the masters of families, "incorporated together
into a town fellowship," but "only in civill things." Thus did the men
of Providence put into practice their doctrine of a church separable
from the state, and of a political order in which there were no
magistrates, no elders exercising civil as well as spiritual authority,
and no restraint on soul liberty.

A year or two later William Coddington, loyal ally of Anne Hutchinson,
with others--Clarke, Coggeshall, and Aspinwall, who resented the
aggressive attitude of Boston--purchased from the Indians the island of
Aquidneck in Narragansett Bay and at the northern end planted Pocasset,
afterwards Portsmouth, the second settlement in the colony of Rhode
Island. They, too, entered into a covenant to join themselves into a
body politic and elected Coddington as their judge and five others as
elders. But this modeling of the government after the practices of the
Old Testament was not pleasing to a majority of the community, which
desired a more democratic organization. After a few months, in the
spring of 1639, Coddington and his followers therefore journeyed
southward and established a third settlement at Newport. Here the
members adopted a covenant, "engaging" themselves "to bear equall
charges, answerable to our strength and estates in common," and to be
governed "by major voice of judge and elders; the judge to have a double
voice." Though differing from the system as developed in Massachusetts,
the Newport government at the beginning had a decidedly theocratic
character.

The last of the Rhode Island settlements was at Shawomet, or Warwick, on
the western mainland at the upper end of the Bay. T