Nicholas Easton - Rhode Island

Rhode Island

Easton was apparently a minister of sorts in his own right, and aroused the ire of the Massachusetts magistrate John Winthrop who wrote in 1638, "Those who were gone with Mrs. Hutchinson to Aquiday fell into new errors daily. One Nicholas Easton, a tanner, taught that gifts and graces were that antichrist mentioned Thes., and that which withheld, &c, was the preaching of the law, and that every of the elect had the Holy Ghost and also the devil in dwelling."

A year after arriving in Portsmouth there was discord among the leadership of the settlement, and several of the leaders decided to go elsewhere. Easton was one of nine men to sign an agreement on 28 April 1639 whereby a new plantation would be formed. The men and their families soon moved to the south end of Aquidneck Island, establishing the settlement of Newport, under the leadership of William Coddington, who had been the judge (governor) of Portsmouth up to this time. In November of the same year, Easton and John Clarke were appointed to inform Mr. Vane of the state of affairs on the island, and to look into obtainining a patent for the island from the king.

Winthrop wrote periodically about affairs in Rhode Island, seeming to always find justification for the removal of its leaders from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In August 1641 he made some remarks directed largely at Easton's theology when he wrote, "Other troubles arose in the Island (Aquidneck) by reason of one Nicholas Easton, a tanner, a man very bold, though ignorant." He went on to discuss Easton's theological views in a disparaging way, and then concluded his paragraph, seeming to gloat over Rhode Island's difficulties with church governance by writing, "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."