CHAPTER XIV.
NARRAGANSETT AND CONNECTICUT SETTLEMENTS (1635-1637) The island of Aquidneck, to which Mrs.Hutchinson retired, was secured from Canonicus and Miantonomoh, the sachems of the Narragansetts, through the good offices of Roger Williams, by John Clarke, William Coddington, and other leaders of her faction, a short time preceding her banishment, after a winter spent in Maine, where the climate proved too cold for them.[1] The place of settlement was at the northeastern corner of the island, and was known first by its Indian name of Pocasset and afterwards as Portsmouth.

The first settlers, nineteen in number, constituted themselves a body politic and elected William Coddington as executive magistrate, with the title of chief judge, and William Aspinwall as secretary.[2] Other emigrants swelled the number, till in 1639 a new settlement at the southern part of the island, called Newport, resulted through the secession of a part of the settlers headed by Coddington.

For more than a year the two settlements remained separate, but in March, 1640, they were formally united.[3] Settlers flocked to these parts, and in 1644 the Indian name of Aquidneck was changed to Rhode Island.[4] Not less flourishing was Roger Williams's settlement of Providence on the main-land.

In the summer of 1640 Patuxet was marked off as a separate township;[5] and in 1643 Samuel Gorton and others, fleeing from the wrath of Massachusetts, made a settlement called Shawomet, or Warwick, about twelve miles distant from Providence.
The tendency of these various towns was to combine in a commonwealth, but on account of their separate origin the process of union was slow.
The source of most of their trouble in their infancy was the grasping policy of Massachusetts.

Next to heretics in the bosom of the commonwealth heretic neighbors were especially abhorrent.