John Easton

John Easton (born 1624 in England , † December 12, 1705 in Newport , Rhode Island ) was an English politician . He served as Lieutenant Governor and Governor of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations .

Early years

John Easton, son of Mary Kent and Nicholas Easton , a president and colonial governor of the Colony of Rhode Iceland and Providence Plantations was during the reign of James I born. The baptism took place on December 19, 1624 in the parish church of St. Ethel peace in Romsey in the county of Hampshire instead. His mother died in 1630 shortly after the birth and death of their fourth child. At the age of nine, at the end of March 1634, he boarded the Mary & John in Southampton with his father and older brother Peter, the only living sibling . The destination was the Massachusetts Bay Colony in New England . The family settled there first in Ipswich and then in Newbury . In Newbury, his father became a supporter of dissident clergymen John Wheelswright and Anne Hutchinson . On November 20, 1637, his father was one of three Newbury elders who were disarmed for assisting these clergymen. In March 1638 he and his family left the colony as they were exiled. The family moved to Winnecunnet Today Hampton ( New Hampshire ), where they briefly were also banned later. At the end of 1638 they settled with other followers of Anne Hutchinson in Portsmouth on Aquidneck Island in Narragansett Bay .

Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations

John Easton moved with his father and others to the southern tip of Aquidneck Island in 1639, where they established the settlement of Newport. He spent the rest of his life there. In 1653, not yet 30 years old, Easton began his public career, which would last for more than four decades. Easton was elected Attorney General for the island cities of Portsmouth and Newport that year. In 1654 he became a commissioner at Newport and in 1655 Freeman at Newport. Easton was elected Attorney General for the entire colony in 1656 - a post he held for a total of 16 years. In the following years he also held other offices. In 1665 he became a Member of Parliament and in 1666 he served his first of 18 terms as an assistant.

Easton was elected lieutenant governor of the colony in 1674. William Coddington was the colonial governor at the time. Easton served two one-year terms and was replaced in 1676 during the King Philip's Wars by the military experienced John Cranston . During his tenure as Lieutenant Governor Easton wrote the following report on the Indian War in 1675: A True Relation of what I know & of Reports & my Understanding concerning the Beginning & Progress of the War now between the English and the Indians. The following year he was a member of a court martial in Newport, which tried the complicity of several Indians during the King Philip's War.

The period between 1676 and 1681 was one of the few periods where Easton did not hold public office. He then held the post as an assistant throughout the 1680s. In January 1690, after Edmund Andros' three-year reign over all New England colonies, he was one of the assistants who wrote a letter to the new English monarchs, Mary II and William III. He congratulated them on their accession to the throne and informed them that Andros had been captured in Rhode Island and returned to the Massachusetts Bay Colony for detention.

Gubernatorial time

Elections of 1690

In the elections in May 1690, all members of the General Assembly were present. The royal statutes were read publicly, as was the case before Andros. Old Henry Bull was elected colonial governor. But he refused the post. Then Easton was elected colonial governor and John Greene was elected lieutenant governor. The Rhode Island historian and Lieutenant Governor Samuel G. Arnold described this period as follows:

“The first grand period of Rhode Island history, the formation period, had now ended. An era of domestic strife and outward conflict for existence, of change and interruption, of doubt and gloom, anxiety and distress, had almost passed. The problem of self government was solved, and a new era of independent action commenced, which was to continue unbroken for an entire century, until her separate sovereignty should be merged in the American Union, by the adoption of the federal constitution; and her royal charter, the noble work of her republican founders, was never again to be interrupted, not even by the storm of revolution, until the lapse of more than a century and a half had made its provisions obsolete. "

War with France

The governor, lieutenant governor, and assistants were exempt from paying any colonial tax due to their expenses incurred during their tenure and the fact that they were not paid. Easton held the post as governor for five years. His tenure fell at the time when England and her allies were waging a nine-year war with France. The war also hit New England, known there as King William's War . Letters from other colonies reached Rhode Island during this time requesting troops. The answer was usually the same: the colony, because of its exposed location, needs the men at home. Nevertheless, in October 1690, the General Assembly voted to raise £ 300  to continue the war. The colony at that time consisted of nine towns : Providence , Portsmouth, Newport, Warwick , Westerly , Jamestown , New Shoreham ( Block Island ), Kings Town and East Greenwich . Each town was taxed on its size. The legislature also took care of property valuation, as the valuation principle was used in the past. In addition, the taxation of shipping was introduced. Every ship from a different colony calling at Newport to unload its cargo was subject to a tax on the goods.

While the war was a great burden for the colonists, a bright spot arose in July 1690. Since the colonies were continuously ravaged by French privateers , it was decided to campaign against them. For this purpose, two slups with a crew of 90 under the command of Captain Thomas Paine of Newport were sent out to attack the enemy. Paine approached five ships near Block Island, sent some men ashore to prevent a French landing, then ran into shallow water to avoid encirclement. A battle ensued in the late afternoon, which lasted until dark. When the French withdrew, they lost over half of their husbands, while Paine only lost one man and six were wounded. The people in the colony were inspired by it. This was Rhode Island's first win at sea. The French privateers continued to make the seas unsafe by hijacking the colonial ships. As a result, there was a special session of the General Assembly, which imposed strict measures to increase taxes, but not yet collected.

Other concerns

In October 1691, the Ordinary Session of the General Assembly was held in Providence at the home of John Whipple, brother of Colonel Joseph Whipple . Smallpox broke out on the island about a year before the General Assembly met again in Newport . It was a particularly contagious strain.

William Phips

On October 7, 1691, the Massachusetts Bay Colony joined the Plymouth Colony under a royal statute along with William Phips as colonial governor. The following year Phips announced to the Rhode Island Colony that he had been appointed Commander-in-Chief of all militias and other forces in the New England colonies at sea and on land. This was in direct contradiction to the royal statutes of Rhode Island and Connecticut . Captain Christopher Almy was then sent to England on the matter to explain that the 1663 royal charter stipulated that the troops could only be under the control of the colony and to resolve other matters pertaining to the Rhode Island colony. The decisions were all in favor of Rhode Island. The Rhode Island colony would have full control of its militias in peacetime, but would have to provide a contingent like all colonies during wartime. As part of this contingent, Rhode Island provided 48 men who were sent into service under the colonial governor of New York.

Another point in Easton's tenure as colonial governor affected the Massachusetts Bay Colony in large measure, but did not expand to Rhode Island. It was the time of the witch hunt. These penalties appear in the Rhode Island Code, but no prosecution has ever taken place. The historian Samuel Greene Arnold wrote:

“The people of this colony had suffered too much from the superstitions and the priestcraft of the Puritans, readily to adopt their delusions, and there was no State clergy to stimulate the whimsies of their parishioners. More important matters to them than the bedevilment of their neighbors engrossed their whole attention. "

The jurisdiction disputes with the Colony of Connecticut continued. In May 1692, a letter reached Colonial Governor Easton in a far friendlier tone than previous correspondence. His reply was the same. A new era was heralded between two rival colonies, which pleased the settlers of both colonies.

death

After the end of his tenure as colonial governor in 1695, Easton went on private business in Newport, where he died on December 12, 1705. Easton was buried in Coddington Cemetery on Farewell Street in Newport, where several other colonial governors were also buried. He was the last colonial governor of Rhode Island to be exiled by the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

family

Easton married Mehitable Gaunt (or Gant), daughter of Lydia and Peter Gaunt from neighboring Plymouth Colony, in 1661. The couple had 5 children and at least 17 grandchildren. They hadn't been married for 13 years when Mehitable passed away in late 1673. After the death of his first wife, he married a woman named Alice, with whom he had no children.

Trivia

The historian Thomas W. Bicknell described Easton as follows:

"Governor Easton was one of the best qualified and most efficient of Colonial governors. His knowledge of the history of the Colony was complete, his judicial ability was tempered by long experience and careful study, and his great activity and energy, mental and physical, partook of the quality of men at life's meridian. Weakness in policy or vacillation in opinion found no lodgment in Governor Easton's administration. "

literature

• Robert C. Anderson, George F. Sanborn Jr., Melinde L. Sanborn: The Great Migration, Immigrants to New England 1634-1635. Volume 2: CF. New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston 2001, ISBN 0-88082-110-8 , pp. 396, 401f.
• Samuel Greene Arnold: History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations . Volume 1, D. Appleton & Company, New York 1859, pp. 519-532.
• John Osborne Austin: Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island . 1887, ISBN 978-0-8063-0006-1 , p. 294.
• Thomas Williams Bicknell: The History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations . Volume 3, The American Historical Society, New York 1920, pp. 1041-1045.
• Jane Fletcher Fiske: The English Background of Nicholas Easton of Newport, Rhode Island. In: New England Historical and Genealogical Register. 154, April 2000, ISSN  0028-4785 , pp. 159-171.
• Jane Fletcher Fiske: The English Background of Richard Kent, Sr. and Stephen Kent of Newbury, Massachusetts and Mary, Wife of Nicholas Easton of Newport, Rhode Island. In: New England Historical and Genealogical Register. 162, October 2008, ISSN  0028-4785 , pp. 245-255.
• Jane Fletcher Fiske: The English Background of Richard Kent, Sr. and Stephen Kent of Newbury, Massachusetts and Mary, Wife of Nicholas Easton of Newport, Rhode Island. In: New England Historical and Genealogical Register. 163, January 2009, ISSN  0028-4785 , pp. 51-65.

Web links

• John Easton in the database of Find a Grave (English)
• John Easton on the quahog.org website