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Illustrated Episode · Volume I, chapter 24 · 1 February 1652

Governor for life, briefly

In a small timber-framed room, a man in a doorway points at three seated magistrates behind a table, while armed men with muskets and pikes crowd in behind him in cold grey light.
Newport, Aquidneck, early 1652. William Coddington holds a commission to rule the island as a feudal lord, and his court is sitting in his town house when Captain Richard Morris and armed islanders break in and order it to disperse. Rothbard's verdict: it was not easy to impose feudal rule on a free people. Coddington fled to Massachusetts and gave up his claim. Chapter 24 of Conceived in Liberty.

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Adapted from Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Mises Institute, 2011), CC BY 3.0.

What happened

In 1651 William Coddington came back from England with a commission from the Council of State that made him governor of Aquidneck for life. He had built himself a town house at Newport, and early in 1652 his island court was sitting there when Captain Richard Morris walked in with a band of armed islanders and, in the historian Richman's phrase, "Cromwell-fashion" bade it disperse. Rothbard names Nicholas Easton among the leaders of the rising. Coddington looked to the Dutch of New Netherland for soldiers and got none. When the crowd hanged his aide Captain Partridge, he fled to Massachusetts, and he could come home only after signing away any claim to more of the island than any other freeman held. In England, Roger Williams and John Clarke had the commission revoked. Rothbard's reading is that Coddington found it was not easy to impose absolute feudal rule on a free people. The citizens of Aquidneck had not asked London for a lord, and when one arrived with a paper saying he owned them, they walked into his court with muskets and told it to go home. He came back to the island a freeman like any other.

Sources

  1. Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2011 single-volume ed.), vol. I, ch. 24, pp. 200-207. CC BY 3.0. Rothbard
  2. Irving Berdine Richman, Rhode Island: Its Making and Its Meaning, vol. II (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1902), ch. IX 'The Coddington Coup d'Etat', pp. 6-8 (Newport) and 22-23 (Morris breaks in on the court; Coddington's letter of 19 Feb 1652; the Dutch agents; Partridge). Secondary source
  3. David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 'Massachusetts Dress Ways'. Secondary source
  4. Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, ed., Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, vol. IV, pt. 1 (Boston, 1854), pp. 60-61 (apparel law of 1651). Primary source
  5. Pilgrim Hall Museum, 'Arms & Armor' (accessed 2026-09-29). Secondary source