nd titles and to dispose of town lands,
Providence established in 1640 a court of arbitration consisting of five
"disposers," who seem also to have served as a sort of executive board
for the town. In all outward relations she remained isolated from her
neighbors, pursuing a course of strictly local independence. Portsmouth
and Newport, for the sake of greater strength, united in March, 1640,
and a year later agreed on a form of government which they called "a
democratic or popular government," in which none was to be "accounted a
delinquent for doctrine." They set up a governor, deputy governor, and
four assistants, regularly elected, and provided that all laws should be
made by the freemen or the major part of them, "orderly assembled." In
the system thus established we can see the influence of the older
colonies and the beginning of a stronger government, but at best the
experiment was half-hearted, for each town reserved to itself complete
control over its own affairs. In 1647 Portsmouth withdrew "to be as free
in their transactions as any other town in the colony," and the spirit
of separatism was still dominant.

But it soon became necessary for the four towns of what is now Rhode
Island to have something more legal upon which to base their right to
exist than a title derived from their plantation covenants and Indian
bargains. Massachusetts was extending her claims southward; Edward
Winslow was in England ready to show that the Rhode Island settlements
were within the bounds of the Plymouth patent; and certain individuals,
traders and land-seekers, were locating in the Narragansett country and
taking possession of the soil. To combat these claims, Roger Williams,
who had so vehemently denied the validity of a royal patent a few years
before, but influenced now, it may be, by Gorton's insistence that a
legal title could be obtained only from England, sailed overseas and
secured from the parliamentary commissioners in March, 1644, a charter
uniting Providence, Portsmouth, and Newport, under the name of
Providence Plantations in the Narragansett Bay, and granting them powers
of government. For the moment even this document had no certain value,
for, in spite of the fact that the parliamentarians were at war with the
King, Charles I was still sovereign of England and should he win in the
Civil War the title would be worthless. However, the patent was not put
in force until 1647, after the victory of Cromwell at Naseby