Nicholas Easton

Nicholas Easton (* 1593 in Lymington , England , † August 15, 1675 in Newport , Rhode Island ) was an English politician . He served as the colonial president and governor of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations .

Early years

Nicholas Easton, son of Elizabeth and John Easton was during the reign of Elizabeth I in Lymington in the county of Hampshire and lived there until 1616. His father died when he was very young. After his death, his mother married John Burrard. When Easton was a teenager, his stepfather passed away. His mother then married her third husband, William Dollinge. While Easton's father and first stepfather were working at the Lymington Salt Works, he became a tanner instead. He may have married in Lymington but soon after moved to Romsey , where all of his four children were baptized and his two youngest children were buried. His first wife, Mary Kent, was the mother of all of his children: Peter, John , James, Elizabeth. She died in 1630, shortly after the birth and death of her fourth child. In March 1634 he boarded the Mary & John in Southampton with his two children still alive, Peter and John, and sailed for the Massachusetts Bay Colony in New England .

Massachusetts Bay Colony

Easton settled in the town of Ipswich , which happened before September 1634. He was then appointed the powder and shot overseer that month. In the spring of 1635 he and a group of other settlers founded the settlement of Agawam, which was later renamed Newbury . During the Antinomian controversy between 1636 and 1638, he supported the dissident theologians John Wheelwright and Anne Hutchinson . On November 20, 1637, he and other followers of these preachers were disarmed. They were ordered to hand over their rifles, pistols, swords, shot, etc. to the authorities. He then moved to Hampton , where he built the first house on the north bank of the Merrimack River . The Massachusetts authorities continued to pursue the followers of Wheelwright and Hutchinson. In this regard, if he did not leave the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Easton was ordered to appear before the next court in March 1638. Shortly thereafter, he joined the many other followers of Hutchinson in Portsmouth on Aquidneck Island , which was also called Rhode Island. The colony and the state would later bear this name. In May 1638 he was given six acres of land in Portsmouth on the north side of the great bay.

Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations

New beginning

Easton was someone who wanted to live by his own laws, which aroused the ire of Massachusetts Magistrate John Winthrop . Winthrop wrote the following in 1638:

"Those who were gone with Mrs. Hutchinson to Aquiday [Aquidneck Island] fell into new errors daily. One Nicholas Easton, a tanner, taught that gifts and graces were that antichrist mentioned Thes [salonians]., And that which withheld, &, was the preaching of the law, and that every of the elect had the Holy Ghost and also the devil in dwelling. "

Goat Island and Easton's Point (1777 map of Newport)

A year after arriving in Portsmouth, there was a falling out over the management of the settlement. Some of the leaders decided to move elsewhere. Easton was one of nine men who signed a contract on April 28, 1639, whereby a new settlement ( plantation ) should be established. The men and their families soon moved to the south end of Aquidneck Island, where they founded the Newport settlement under the leadership of William Coddington , who until then was the judge (governor) of Portsmouth. In November 1639, Easton and John Clarke were appointed to brief Henry Vane on the state of affairs on the island and to seek a patent for the island from the king.

Winthrop wrote regularly about what was happening in Rhode Island and always seemed to find a justification for evicting their leaders from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In August 1641 he made some comments regarding Easton's theology:

"Other troubles arose in the Island (Aquidneck) by reason of one Nicholas Easton, a tanner, a man very bold, though ignorant."

He then responded to Easton's theological views in a derogatory manner, and then concluded the paragraph by boasting about Rhode Island's difficulties with church governance:

“Then joined with Nicholas Easton, Mr. Coddington, Mr. Coggeshall and some others. But their minister, Mr. Clarke, and Mr. Lenthall and Mr. Harding, and some others dissented and publicly opposed, whereby it grew to such heat of contention, that it made a schism among them. "

Colonial President

Easton was one of the prominent citizens mentioned in the Royal Charter of 1663 .

After Easton settled in Newport, he became politically active. Between 1640 and 1644 he was assistant to Colonial Governor Coddington. He did not hold public office in the late 1640s when the two settlements on Aquidneck (Newport and Portsmouth) were merged with the two settlements on the west side of Narragansett Bay ( Providence and Warwick ) under one government. In May 1650 he was elected President of the United Colony of the Four Towns for a year-long term . He was then re-elected for a further term in 1654. During his first term, the General Assembly became the legislature where each member received a fixed salary of two shillings and six pence a day. Military equipment in the form of powder, lead and muskets was also distributed to each town. The division was based on the assessment of the relative strength and population of each town. Providence and Warwick each received a barrel of powder, Portsmouth received two barrels, and Newport received three barrels. The division of the other armaments was done in much the same way.

A serious problem during his first term as president was disputed land claims at Pawtuxet (now Cranston ) and Warwick. The settlers of Pawtuxet placed themselves under the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1642, as their leader William Arnold was ignoring the settlements and leaders of Providence and Warwick. When Providence asked Pawtuxet to pay a tax of £ 12 and 10 shillings, it refused to pay it and complained in Boston . Massachusetts then informed Roger Williams that if the tax was collected, it would take action against the Rhode Island colony. Warwick, on the other hand, was claimed by the Plymouth Colony , then by the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and finally again by the Plymouth Colony. Roger Williams was asked to go to England for the Royal Committee on Plantations to intervene. To make matters worse, Coddington was already in England for reasons unknown to the settlers of Rhode Island. He would eventually return to New England with a commission that removed Portsmouth and Newport from union with Providence and Warwick to create an independent government for the two settlements on the island.

Another incident during his first term as president highlighted further weaknesses in the Rhode Island colony and hostilities towards it from its northern neighbors. When the Reverend John Clarke (pastor of Newport Baptist Church), Obadiah Holmes, and John Crandall visited a sick church member in Lynn, Massachusetts, they were arrested, charged, found guilty of being Anabaptist , fined and severely flogged for insolvency . Clarke's fine was paid by a friend without his knowledge or consent. Crandall returned home on bail. Holmes was so cruelly whipped that he could not find rest for many days unless he propped himself up on his elbows and knees.

Through the new commission from the Crown, which existed between 1651 and 1654, Coddington held the post of governor of the towns of Newport and Portsmouth for the first two years and John Sanford for the last year. Meanwhile, the troubled settlements of Providence and Warwick had three different presidents over the same period. Roger Williams had gone to England and returned with the hope of reconciling the differences between the Towns. He brought back a letter from former Massachusetts Governor Sir Harry Vane, who was still a dear friend of the Rhode Island colonists, asking the people in the colony to resolve their hostility. In his letter he wrote the following:

"Are there no wise men among you? No public self-denying spirits ... who can find some way of union before you become a prey to your enemies? "

Easton began his second term as president in 1654, which ended in 1655. The four towns of the Rhode Island Colony were reunited. Easton served as president of all four towns in the Rhode Island Colony for both his first and second terms.

Colonial governor

Easton appeared on a list of Newport Freemen from 1655. He held the post of commissioner in 1660. He was involved in running the colony for the last ten years of his life, beginning in 1665. Major changes had occurred since his presidency: the government of England switched from a protectorate back to a monarchy after Oliver Cromwell was dead, Charles II was on the throne and Harry Vane was executed for high treason. For the Colony of Rhode Island, this was a very positive development in the form of the Royal Charter of 1663 . Easton was one of several prominent citizens mentioned in the document. The new statutes laid down once and for all the contentious issues of colonial existence and ownership. Easton served as an MP for Newport in the Colonial General Assembly from 1665 to 1666. Then he became the lieutenant governor of the whole colony. He held the post from 1666 to 1672. In May 1672 William Brenton was elected colonial governor, but refused to take up his post. Easton was then elected colonial governor. He held the office for two terms until 1674. William Coddington was his successor. Easton became a Quaker . He died in August 1675 at the age of 81. His body was interred in Coddington Cemetery in Newport, also known as Friends' Burial Ground , next to his second wife Christian.

Honors

The Easton's Point and Easton's Beach in Newport was named after Nicholas Easton honor. The historian Thomas W. Bicknell described Easton's Beach as follows:

"[It is] a permanent monument in the honor of this earnest, faithful, honored founder of Rhode Island ..."

family

Nicholas Easton was married twice. On June 26, 1585 he married Mary Kent, daughter of Ellen Pile and Thomas Kent, in Over Wallop (Hampshire). She was the mother of his four children, only two of whom reached adulthood. He took these two to New England. The eldest son, Peter, was named after his mother's stepfather. Peter Easton was married to Ann Coggeshall, daughter of President John Coggeshall . He worked in colonial policy as a sergeant , commissioner, assistant, treasurer and attorney general . His daughter Mary later married Weston Clarke, son of President Jeremy Clarke , and his daughter Waite later married John Carr, son of Colonial Governor Caleb Carr . Easton's other son, John, was active in colonial politics for most of his adult life. He served as colonial governor for five consecutive terms from 1690 to 1695. Nicholas Easton's third wife, Ann Clayton, married Henry Bull , who later served as colonial governor for two brief terms in the 1690s , after his death .

literature

• Anderson, Robert Charles; Sanborn, George F. Jr .; Sanborn, Melinde L .: The Great Migration, Immigrants to New England 1634-1635, Volume 2, C-F, Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2001, ISBN 0-88082-110-8 , pp. 396, 400f
• Austin, John Osborne: Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island , Albany, New York: J. Munsell's Sons, 1887, ISBN 978-0-8063-0006-1 , pp. 242, 264, 292-295
• Bicknell, Thomas Williams: The History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations , Volume 3, New York: The American Historical Society, 1920, pp. 998-1001
• Fiske, Jane Fletcher: The English Background of Nicholas Easton of Newport, Rhode Island, New England Historical and Genealogical Register (New England Historic Genealogical Society) 154, April 2000, ISSN  0028-4785 , pp. 159-171
• Fiske, Jane Fletcher: The English Background of Richard Kent, Sr. and Stephen Kent of Newbury, Massachusetts and Mary, Wife of Nicholas Easton of Newport, Rhode Island, New England Historical and Genealogical Register (New England Historic Genealogical Society) 162, October 2008, ISSN  0028-4785 , pp. 245-255

Web links

• Nicholas Easton in the database of Find a Grave (English)
• Rhode Island Presidents and Governors