Immigration To New England
He first immigrated to Massachusetts Bay in 1637 and then went south to Rhode Island. Clarke immediately sided with Anne Hutchinson and the Antinomians and was one of those forced into exile by Massachusetts Bay. Clarke learned from Roger Williams that Aquidneck Island (Rhode Island) was available, and he, William Coddington, and other settlers purchased it from the Narragansetts. They left Massachusetts and established Portsmouth in 1638. Clarke is one of the signers of the Portsmouth Compact.
In 1639 when William Coddington lost control of the Portsmouth settlement, he, Clarke and seven others left to found Newport, Rhode Island. Clarke headed the church in Newport which was Puritan/Separatist congregation, but he had a religious and political falling out with Coddington. The church split with Clarke taking part and eventually emerging with a Baptist church, while most of the others eventually became Quakers when that movement arrived in Rhode Island in the 1650s.
Read more about this topic: John Clarke (Baptist Minister)
Famous quotes containing the words immigration and/or england:
“I was interested to see how a pioneer lived on this side of the country. His life is in some respects more adventurous than that of his brother in the West; for he contends with winter as well as the wilderness, and there is a greater interval of time at least between him and the army which is to follow. Here immigration is a tide which may ebb when it has swept away the pines; there it is not a tide, but an inundation, and roads and other improvements come steadily rushing after.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“a notable prince that was called King John;
And he ruled England with main and with might,
For he did great wrong, and maintained little right.”
—Unknown. King John and the Abbot of Canterbury (l. 2–4)