Williams among the rest, soon after his return from England in May, 1648; and I think his account deserved full credit: for although unwarrantable attempts were made to disgrace and destroy him, because, unconsecrated by ordination and not privileged by a university education, he presumed to exercise the functions of a scriptural teacher, and because he was as steadfast as he was extravagant and heterodox in his religious opinions, insolent under provocation, and too ready to return railing for railing, yet the whole tenor of his life shows that he was conscientious, sincere, and, in matters of fact, honest and truthful.

If, however, there were any errors in Gorton's story, Williams had, at a later period, ample opportunity to correct them. From the end of 1651 to the summer of 1654, he was in England, employed, jointly with John Clarke, as agent of the Colony to procure from the Council of State the abrogation of Coddington's Charter, and the confirmation of the Providence-Plantations Charter, obtained by Williams in 1644. Most of the distinguished persons, who, in 1644, were commissioners of plantations, were then living. Six of them, including three signers of his charter, were members of the Council of State in April, 1652, when the petition of himself and Clarke was presented (Parl. Hist., xx. 78, 79). Two of these (Cornelius Holland and Sir Henry Vane) labored with him so zealously, that they received the thanks of the Colony for their eminent services in her behalf (Backus, i. 296). Sir Henry aided in framing the petition, and exerted all his influence and personal ability to insure it success. Williams called him "the sheet-anchor of our ship" (id., p. 280). He was on terms of such intimacy with Sir Henry, as to be, for more than ten weeks, a guest at Belleau, the country residence of Sir Henry, in Lincolnshire. Many, if not most, of these ex-commissioners were personally cognizant of all that had transpired at the Board at the hearing of Gorton's complaint; and there can be little doubt that Williams sought,

and that they gave him, in the course of his last visit to England, full and authentic information in regard to the declaration of the Earl of Warwick.

Moreover, Winslow-the agent of Massachusetts and the other colonies, the old antagonist of Gorton-was still in London, and no doubt would, if he could, have contradicted the story of the earl's declaration; and as he and Williams, though personally friends, were unavoidably often brought into conflict where this very story would have been alleged as an argument in support of the Rhode-Island Charter, Williams's grave recital of it sixteen (not twenty-five) years after is strong presumptive proof, that the story was virtually or expressly confirmed, even by Winslow himself, the arch-enemy of Gorton and the Providence-Plantations Charter, and the official advocate of the "pretended" patent denounced by the declaration in question

Now, whoever, in this host of competent and credible witnesses, might be his informant, Roger Williams had too much discernment and circumspection to misunderstand or misjudge, or to adopt credulously, and without proper scrutiny, the accounts they gave him. Nor would he be likely to forget the report of an incident of such paramount interest to him, so vitally important to Rhode Island, and so intimately connected with all his public labors, with the promotion of his long-cherished moral purposes, and with the grand achievement of his political life.

But Mr. Deane, as mentioned before, intimates that it is not safe to rely upon the statement of Williams, because it was made twenty-five years after the occurrence; leaving it to be inferred that Williams's memory was not to be trusted for that length of time.

This, I apprehend, is altogether a gratuitous surmise; an assumption not based on alleged facts, not warranted on general principles, and specially contradicted by what we know of the latter years of Williams.

It is almost universally admitted, as a law of our nature, that, in aged persons, the memory retains its earlier more firmly than its more recent acquisitions; and that those impressions which are deepest are also the most permanent. Consequently, although Williams, at the age of seventy, might find that tame and ordinary occurrences of the preceding day, week, or month, were more apt than formerly to escape his recollection, yet he would not, on that account, be the less sure to remember accurately an incident of very great interestwhich had been made known to him at the age of fifty-four, and which had been treasured up for sixteen years after, as a subject of reflection, and a frequent topic of conversation. Before we are called upon to disbelieve his account of such an incident, we should have positive proof of an extraordinary decay of his memory.

The facts, however, in his case, are proof to the contrary. Two years after this period of supposed infirmity, he was in such full possession of all his faculties, mental and corporeal, as to row his boat thirty miles in one day; and on the next, after a few hours' repose, to engage in a three-days' debate on fourteen propositions against three logical champions of Fox, the Quaker, a contest which could have been maintained by no one without the aid of a strong memory and an unimpaired intellect (Backus, i. 461; Knowles, p. 338). In 1677 (seven years after his letter to Mason was written), his memory was strong enough to enable him to give the world a full account of this three-days' debate and its sequel at Providence, in his "George Fox digged out of his Burrowes." His letter of the 6th of May, 1682, to Governor Bradstreet (which is in the possession of this Society, and in which he solicited the governor's friendly aid towards the printing of Williams's manuscript discourses), furnishes us with an incident that demonstrates both that his memory was then good, and that he preserved it, by keeping it, at the age of eighty-three, in habitual exercise. He writes, " By my fireside, I have recollected

the discourses which (by many tedious journeys) I have had with the scattered English at Narraganset, before the war and since. I have reduced them to those twenty-two heads (enclosed), which is near thirty sheets of my writing."

The confidence of his neighbors, who knew him best, in the fidelity of his memory, was manifested in various ways, and continued unabated to the close of his life. Three or four months only before his death, he was called upon to sign an instrument, intended as a settlement of the long-standing controversy, of which, five years before, he had drawn up a long and minute analysis, respecting the Pawtuxet lands.

*

An additional proof of the slight grounds upon which the accuracy of Williams has been brought in question is, that the main fact embraced in Earl Warwick's declaration was asserted by Williams's former colleague, in London, John Clarke, and others, in the second of the reasons for joining the King's Province to Rhode Island, presented to Lord Clarendon in a petition drawn up five years before the letter to Mason was written. It is there alleged, that the grant "which Mr. Welles (Welde), under-hand, got of the same county, was prohibited, being never passed the council-table nor registered" (R. I. Rec., ii. 162; 2 Mass. Hist. Coll., vii. 104). It may be added, that, still three years earlier, President Brenton told Edward Hutchinson (the official agent of Massachusetts) that "the" Narraganset "Patent was not fairly got; " that "there was no such thing upon record in any court of England, for he had sent to search the records;" and says Hutchinson, in his letter to Secretary Rawson, 2d April, 1662, "find there theirs, but not ours" (Mass. Archives, ii. 26).

I should not have dwelt at such length on this particular head; but besides that, as a septuagenary, I felt bound to stand by my order, I have been pained to find, in grave his

He was not strictly a colleague. He was the agent of Newport and Portsmouth; Williams, of Providence and Warwick.

tory, the credibility of Roger Williams impeached on the same ground, for the purpose of shielding the injustice of our predecessors from merited censure.

Under the fifth head, Mr. Deane very justly corrects my error in stating that the Narraganset Patent is not mentioned by Winthrop; and points out an allusion made to it in a preliminary deliberation of the General Court of Massachusetts, nearly three years after the date of the patent. I beg to apologize for this oversight.

It is a long time - many years before I knew of any Narraganset Patent-since I read Winthrop's Journal continuously; and when, in 1860, I had occasion to consult it in reference to the patent, I naturally sought out those particular places where some notice might be expected of its character and origin; of the circumstances, agency, and instructions under which it was procured, or of its reception, and the use made of it here, especially at the return from England of Williams, of Gorton, and of his associates; in the instructions of 1646 to Winslow; and in those parts of the journal where the orders, letters, and passports, emanating from the Plantation Commissioners, are set forth at length: but, in all these places (above a dozen), the subject seems to be sedulously avoided (Winth., ii. 25, 31, 76, 159, 173, 193, 212, 220, 251, 272, 280283, 295–297, 298, 316, 318, 319, 322, 323). In mitigation of my fault, I would beg to say further, that the casual and solitary allusion to it, now brought to view, does not, in the slightest degree, affect the justice of my conclusion, that the silence of Winthrop was probably owing to his consciousness that the patent was worthless. His comparative silence, his carefully abstaining from all notice of it on so many fitting occasions, especially when coupled with his total silence in regard to the letter written to him by Williams, disparaging the patent, make it, as I said, probable, and, as I may now say, nearly certain, that he did consider the patent

worthless.