Samuel Gorton, founder of Warwick, was styled by the historian Samuel Greene Arnold "one of the most remarkable men who ever lived".
A biographer called him "the premature John the Baptist of New England Transcendentalism".
The historian Charles Francis Adams called him "a crude and half-crazy thinker".
His contemporaries in Massachusetts called him an arch-heretic, a beast, a miscreant, a proud and pestilent seducer, a prodigious minter of exorbitant novelties.
Edward Rawson, secretary of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, described him as "a man whose spirit was stark drunk with blasphemies and insolence, a corrupter of the truth, a disturber of the peace wherever he comes".
Nathaniel Morton stated he "was deeply leavened with blasphemous and familistical opinions".
He was thrown out, more or less, from Boston, Plymouth, Pocasset, Newport, and Providence.

On the other hand, Dr. Ezra Styles recorded the following testimony of John Angell, the last disciple of Gorton:

"He said Gorton was a holy man;
wept day and night for the sins and blindness of the world had a long walk through the trees and woods by his house, where he constantly walked morning and evening, and even in the depths of the night, alone by himself, for contemplation and the enjoyment of the dispensation of light.
He was universally beloved by his neighbours, and the Indians, who esteemed him, not only as a friend, but one high in communion with God in Heaven".
Gorton sometimes signed himself "a professor of the mysteries of Christ".

There is plenty more to recommend Gorton, the facts of whose life are given in The Life And Times Of Samuel Gorton, by Adelos Gorton.
He fought like a fiend for the helpless and oppressed, worked for the abolition of slavery, helped the Quakers and Indians, and worked against the prosecution of witches.
He defied the Boston hierarchy, and after they sent a small army to get him he befuddled the court, including John Cotton, with one of the most complicated religious discourses ever heard.

Samuel Gorton was born at Gorton, England, near the present city of Manchester, about 1592.
Although he did not attend any celebrated schools or universities, he was a master of Greek and Hebrew and could read the Bible in the original.
He worked as a "clothier" in London, but was greatly concerned with religion.

Gorton left England, he said, "to enjoy libertie of conscience in respect to faith towards God, and for no other end".
With his wife and three or more children he arrived in Boston in March, 1637, and soon found it was no place for anyone looking for liberty of conscience.
Roger Williams had recently been thrown out, and Anne Hutchinson and her Antinomians were slugging it out with the powers-that-be.
Gorton and his family moved to Plymouth.

Soon he was in trouble there, for defending a woman who was accused of smiling in church.
She was Ellen Aldridge, a widow of good repute who was employed by Gorton's wife and lived with the family.
The report was:

"It had been whispered privately that she had smiled in the congregation, and the Governor Prence sent to knoe her business, and command, after punishment as the bench see fit, her departure and also anyone who brought her to the place from which she came'".
Gorton said they were preparing to deport her as a vagabond, and to escape the shame she fled to the woods for several days, returning at night.
He advised the poor woman not to appear in court as what she was charged with was not in violation of law.
Gorton appeared for her, however, and what he told the magistrates must have been plenty, for he was charged with deluding the court, fined, and told to leave the colony within fourteen days.
He left in a storm for Pocasset, December 4, 1638.
His wife was in delicate health and nursing an infant with measles.

The unconquerable Mrs. Hutchinson was residing at Pocasset, after having been excommunicated by the Boston church and thrown out of the colony.
One can imagine that with her and Gorton there it was no place for anyone with weak nerves.
William Coddington, who was running the colony, felt constrained to move seven miles south where, with others -- as mentioned above -- he founded Newport.
When, in March, 1640, the two towns were united under Coddington, Gorton claimed the union was irregular and illegally constituted and that it had never been sanctioned by the majority of freeholders.

Then he became involved in a ruckus remarkably similar to the one in Plymouth.
A cow owned by an old woman trespassed on Gorton's land.
While driving the cow back home the woman was assaulted by a servant maid of Gorton.
The old woman complained to the deputy governor, who ordered the servant brought before the court.
Gorton reverted to his Plymouth tactics, refused to let her go, and appeared himself before the Portsmouth grand jury.
During the trial he told off the jury, called them "Just Asses" and called a freeman "a saucy boy and Jack-an-Apes".
He was jailed and banished.

Gorton then moved to Providence and soon put the town in a turmoil.
He held that no group of colonists could set up or maintain a government without royal sanction.
Since Rhode Island at that time did not have such sanction, his opinion was not popular.
Roger Williams wrote his friend Winthrop as follows:

"Master Gorton, having foully abused high and low at Aquidneck is now bewitching and bemaddening poor Providence, both with his unclean and foul censures of all the ministers of this country (for which myself have in Christ's name withstood him), and also denying all visible and external ordinances in depth of Familism: almost all suck in his poison, as at first they did at Aquidneck.
Some few and myself withstand his inhabitation and town privileges, without confession and reformation of his uncivil and inhuman practices at Portsmouth;
yet the tide is too strong against us, and I fear (if the framer of hearts help not) it will force me to little Patience, a little isle next to your Prudence".
Williams also stated: "Our peace was like the peace of a man who hath the tertian ague".

Providence finally managed to get Gorton out of the town, and he and some friends bought land at Pawtuxet on the west side of Narragansett Bay, five miles south but still within the jurisdiction of the Providence colony.
This town should not be confused with Pawtucket, just north of Providence, or Pawcatuck, Connecticut, on the Pawcatuck River, opposite Westerly, Rhode Island.

Up to now, Gorton had been looking for trouble, and now that he was trying to get away from it, trouble started looking for him.
Upon intelligence that the formidable agitator was to favor them with his presence, the benighted inhabitants of Pawtuxet, alas, gave their allegiance to Massachusetts and asked that colony to expel the newcomers.
As it was the custom of that alert colony to take over the property of persons asking for protection, this was an act roughly equivalent to throwing open the door to a pack of wolves and saying "Come and get it".

Gorton and company, however, promptly bought land from Miantonomi a few miles south of Pawtuxet, extending from the present Gaspee Point south to Warwick Neck and twenty miles inland.
The settlement was called Shawomet.
It was not within the jurisdiction of anybody or anything, including Providence and Massachusetts.
If Gorton wanted peace and quiet for his complicated meditations this is where he should have had it.
Instead of that he was engulfed by bedlam.

Pomham and Soconoco, a couple of minor sachems (of something less than exalted character) under Miantonomi, declared that they had never assented to the sale of land to Gorton and had never received anything for it.
Following the glorious lead of the heroes of Pawtuxet, they also submitted themselves to the protection of Massachusetts.
One historical authority presents laborious and circuitous testimony tending to arouse suspicion that Massachusetts was behind the clouds settling down on the embattled Gorton.

However, the General Court at Boston ordered the purchasers of Shawomet to appear before them to answer the sachems' claim.
The purchasers rejected the order in two letters written in vigorous terms.
Then Massachusetts switched to its standard tactics.
It pointed out twenty-six instances of blasphemy in the letters, and ordered the writers to submit or force of arms would be used.
The next week, forty soldiers were sent to get the miscreants.
The latter tried to arbitrate through a delegation from Providence, which offer was declined by the invaders.
The Commissioners at Boston wrote the victims to see their misdeeds and repent or they should "look upon them as men prepared for slaughter".

At Shawomet, women and children fled in terror across the Bay.
The men fortified a blockhouse and got ready to fight, but meanwhile appealed to the King and again tried to arbitrate.
Gorton evidently still had plenty to learn about Massachusetts, but he was learning fast.
Governor Winthrop wrote:

"You may do well to take notice, that besides the title to land between the English and the Indians there, there are twelve of the English that have subscribed their names to horrible and detestable blasphemies, who are rather to be judged as blasphemous than they should delude us by winning time under pretence of arbitration".

The attack started on October 2, 1643, and the Gortonists held out for a day and a night.
The attackers sent for more soldiers, and the defenders, to save bloodshed, surrendered under the promise that they would be treated as neighbors.
Promptly their livestock was taken and according to Gorton the soldiers were ordered to knock down anyone who should utter a word of insolence, and run through anyone who might step out of line.

When the captives arrived in Boston, "the chaplain (of their captors) went to prayers in the open streets, that the people might take notice what they had done in a holy manner, and in the name of the Lord".
Gorton and ten of his friends were thrown in jail.

On Sunday they refused to attend church.
The magistrates were determined to compel them.
The prisoners agreed, provided they might speak after the sermon, which was permitted.
Here was Gorton's chance to indulge in something at which he was supreme.
The Boston elders were great at befuddling the opposition with torrents of ecclesiastical obscurities, but Gorton was better.
Reverend Cotton preached to them about Demetrius and the shrines of Ephesus.
Gorton replied with blasts that scandalized the congregation.

At the trial which took place later, the Pomham matter was completely omitted.
The Gortonists were charged with blasphemy and tried for their lives.
Four ecclesiastical questions were presented by the General Court to Gorton: "1.

Whether the Fathers, who died before Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, were justified and saved only by the blood which he shed, and the death which he suffered after his incarnation?
2.

Whether the only price of our redemption were not the death of Christ on the cross, with the rest of his sufferings and obediences, in the time of his life here, after he was born of the Virgin Mary?
3.

Who was the God whom he thinke we serve?
4.

What he means when he saith, wee worship the starre of our God Remphan, Chion, Moloch"?

Gorton answered in writing.
All of the elders except three voted for death, but a majority of the deputies refused to sanction the sentence.
Seven of the prisoners were sentenced to be confined in irons for as long as it pleased the court, set to work and, if they broke jail or proclaimed heresy, to be executed if convicted.
The three others got off easier.
The convicts were put in chains, paraded before the congregation at the Reverend Cotton's lecture as an example, and sent to prisons in various towns, where they languished all winter, chains included.