Samuel Gorton - Later Life

Later Life

The Samuel Gorton who stepped off the ship in Boston in 1648 seemed to be a totally different person than the one who sailed to England four years earlier. No longer were there court cases with charges of blasphemy, heresy, insolent and riotous behavior, and degradation of the magistrates and ministers. With his settlement of Warwick secured by royal decree, Gorton became actively involved in roles that he had previously criticized. The four towns of the colony had come together under a fragile government, choosing its first President, John Coggeshall in 1647. With his success in England, Gorton was seen as a leader in the colony and in 1649 he was chosen as the Warwick assistant to President John Smith, also from Warwick, but both Gorton and Smith declined their positions. Being fined, they both ultimately served, and their fines were remitted. William Coddington was in England during this time, on a mission to remove the island towns of Newport and Portsmouth from the government with Providence and Warwick. In 1651 Gorton was chosen as President of the colony, but Coddington had been successful in gaining his commission to put the island towns under his governance, so Gorton presided only over the "plantation" towns of Providence and Warwick. In 1652 Smith was once again selected as President and Gorton was once again the assistant from Warwick. A remarkable statute during this administration, an act for the emancipation of slaves, was likely authored by Gorton.

Gorton was chosen as a commissioner during a majority of the years from 1651 to 1663, and his name appears on a list of Warwick freemen in 1655. In the Royal Charter of 1663, he was one of several prominent citizens named in the document. Also, during the last half of the 1660s he was the Deputy to the General Assembly for four years. After last serving in a public capacity in 1670, when he was 78 years old, Gorton continued to live in Warwick until his death in 1677. In 1675 Gorton had received word that the Indians living in the Connecticut Colony intended to invade the Narragansett country. This intention was realized the same year, when King Phillips War consumed the New England colonies. While the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations hardly took an active role, the simple matter of geography put the colony in the middle of the fray, causing it to suffer more than any other colony. Being forced to flee their homes during the conflict, the people of Warwick returned in the spring of 1677 to a barren wasteland, and began the task of rebuilding.

Though Gorton did not leave a will, several deeds to his heirs on 27 November 1677 distributed his properties, and in one of these instruments he called himself "professor of the mysteries of Christ." He was dead by 10 December. He is buried in the Samuel Gorton Cemetery, Rhode Island Historic Cemetery, Warwick #67, at 422 Samuel Gorton Avenue in Warwick, and his grave is marked with a governor's medallion and an uninscribed field stone.