The below story was written by J. Russell Bullock in his book entitled INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE AND
TIMES OF STUKELEY WESTCOTE, with some of his descendants; printed in 1886 (50 original copies). Copied and typed in sections to be printed in the WESTCOTT FAMILY QUARTERLY, by Lorraine A. Carrington, descendant, for the reading enjoyment of all interested Westcott descendants. Retyped for the website by the webmaster.

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STUKELEY WESTCOTE

A Paper Read Before R. I. Veteran Citizens’ Historical
Association at Providence, April 5th, 1886
by Hon. J. Russell Bullock

My paper may be entitled “Some Incidents in the Life and Times of Stukeley Westcote,” the first named of the twelve grantees in the Initial Deed of 1638 of Roger Williams to his associates.
Less known, perhaps, than some of his contemporaries, I know of no one of that goodly company, who, nearly two and a half centuries ago, under the leadership of Roger Williams, and sustained only by strong faith in a just and overruling Providence, reared on yonder hill-side their crude dwellings, and there laid the foundations of a free state, whose names are not worthy of honorable mention, and the record of whose lives should not be treasured as the most interesting chapter in Rhode Island’s history.
What I have been able to gather, of one of these men, with some coincident events with which he was connected, I present.

The somewhat unusual name Stukeley is of Saxon derivation. In that tongue it was written Stycle, meaning stiff clay, it afterwards became Stucle, and finally as now, Stukeley.

Stukeley Westcote, originally Stukeley of Westcote, the surname being derived from the locality of the field or enclosure where his early ancestors dwelt, and the first of the line I am now tracing, was born in England in the year 1592, probably in the county Devon. He was received as an inhabitant and freeman of Salem, Mass., as early as the year 1636. He died at Portsmouth, on the island of Rhode Island, on one of the early days of the month of January, in the year 1676-7, aged about eighty-five years.

At the time of Westcote’s arrival at Salem, he was about forty-four years of age, and his family numbered eight persons, thus showing that most of his children had been born previous to his departure from England. On the 25th day of October, in the year 1637, he had a house lot on one acre in that town allotted to him, as one of its inhabitants and freemen. This lot had for one of its boundaries the salt water or harbor, for on the 8th day of October, 1643, the proprietors granted to other parties all of the “waste” (unoccupied) lands lying between the lot of Hugh Laskin and Stukely Weskett down to the sea.

Westcote was a member of the church at Salem of which Roger Williams had recently been the pastor. Fully sympathizing with him in the opinions: first, that the members of the Salem church should make public confession of their wrong in having formerly communed with the church of England; second that the civil magistrate had no lawful authority or right to take cognizance of or punish any person for his
religious belief,—Westcote was, with Richard Waterman, Thomas Olney and Francis Weston, on the 12th day of March, 1638, ordered by the “General Court” to remove out of the jurisdiction of “The Govenor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay”, and to remove his family therefrom before the sitting of the next “General Court.” In the language of the tribunals of that day in that Province, the “great censure” was passed upon him for “heresy.” At the same time notice was sent by Hugh Peter to the church at Dorchester of the excommunication of Westcote and of his wife, to prevent them from being received into membership there.

Following the example of his friend and former pastor, Roger Williams, who had two years earlier, accompanied by William Harris, John Smith, the miller, Thomas Angell and Francis Wickes, the two latter then being quite young men, and joined soon after by Joshua Verin, even before they had crossed over from the Seekonk side, Westcote at once left Salem and traversing the “wilderness,” as Roger Williams had called it, then lying between Salem and Providence, arrived at the latter place early in the spring of 1638. Before Westcote’s arrival, Williams had already by his kind treatment of the Narragansetts procured two deeds of gift, the one in 1636, the other in 1638, from their two thief Sachems, Canonicus and Miantinomi, of all that territory extending northwardly, north-westwardly and westwardly, inland twenty miles, and lying between the rivers Pawtucket, now Blackstone, on the east, and the Pawtuxet on the south and southwest. This territory now forms the greater part of the County of Providence.

On the 8th day of the 8th month, 1638, which would be October, Roger Williams freely admitted “twelve loving friends and neighbors,” viz., Stukely Westcote, William Arnold, Thomas James, Robert Coles, John Greene, John Throckmorton, William Harris, William Carpenter, Thomas Olney, Francis Weston, Richard Waterman and Ezekiel Holiman, into equal ownership with himself of so much of the lands above named as he had first acquired in 1636, the same being the lands laying between the rivers Moshashuck and Wanasquatucket. Soon afterwards “others desired to take shelter here”, and among the earliest of these were Chad. Brown, William Field, Thomas Harris, William Wickenden, Benedict Arnold, Robert Williams, Richard Scott, William Reynolds, John Field, John Warner, Thomas Hopkins and Joshua Winsor. And it was agreed by Roger Williams and his original associates that the persons last named, with such others as they and the original associates might thereafter be willing to receive into their fellowship and society, and to a communion of interest in their lands should pay thirty shillings each, of which £ 30 should go to Roger Williams as a “loving consideration and gratuity” for his “great charge and travel” in procuring these lands as ”a place of succor for the distressed.”
In the grant by Roger Williams to his twelve original associates, Stukeley Westcote is the first one named.

When the whole number of settlers, including the original thirteen and four females, viz., the widows Sayer, Tiler and Reeve and Alice Daniels, had reached fifty-two, they made a first division between them of a portion of the lands upon which the city of Providence and its immediate suburbs are now located, mutually assisting to each to hold in severalty a “Home Lot,” so called, and an outlying six acre lot, These “home lots” were intended to contain in quantity about five acres, and extended from North and South Main Streets eastward to a line now the line of Hope Street. The “home lot” allotted to Westcote lay between a home lot belonging to Richard Waterman on the north and one owned by Robert Williams on the south. A careful examination of the early records, and especially of the deeds of adjacent home lots from William Reynolds to Robert Williams, bearing the date the 27th of the 11th month., 1644, and from Hugh Buet or Bewitt to Richard Waterman, and to the town, bearing the same date, leads to the belief that Stukeley Westcote’s home lot was located upon the block bounded by Waterman Street on the north and College Street on the south, and nearly in the center of that block, and extending from North Main Street eastwardly to Hope Street.

On the 10th day of the 12th mo., 1649, Westcote having the previous year removed to Warwick, sold his six acre lot to Thomas Olney. On the 12th day of the 3rd mo. 1652, he also disposed of his “home lot” to Samuel Bennett.

On the 27th day of the 5th mo., 1640, he is a party to the agreement for the division of the Pawtuxet from the Providence lands, and for the disposal of the town’s lands, and for the better government of the town. On the 19th day of the 11th mo., 1645, the thirteen original settlers, of whom Stukeley Westcote was one, with fifty-five others whom they had afterwards received as inhabitants with themselves, agreed in writing by an instrument signed by all of them, to “yield active and passive obedience to the authority of the King and Parliament established in this Colony according to the charter, and to all such wholesome laws and orders as shall be made by the major consent” of the town. His autograph signature to this agreement has been traced and is here appended.

/s/ Stuckley Westcott

In the 12th month, 1648, the day not being named, certain lots of land of threescore acres each, lying against the Pawtucket Falls, are set off to him and Ezekiel Holliman together. On the 19th day of February, 1665, he is allotted seventy-six rights in the common lands east of the seven mile line, there being sixty acres to a right, together with twenty-five acres additional of the common lands. On the 12th day of April, 1675, he is assigned forty-nine rights in the common lands lying west of the seven mile line, there being one hundred and fifty acres to a right. On the 24th day of May, 1675, he is assigned seventy-three rights in the common lands lying between the seven mile and the four mile line.

The initial point from whence the twenty mile line before spoken of, and now forming the eastern boundary of the State of Connecticut, the seven mile line, now forming the western boundary of the towns of Cranston and Johnston and the original town of Smithfield, and the four mile line, was drawn, is what then was and now is “Fox Point”, on the easterly side of Providence river and where that river empties into Narragansett Bay.

In the autumn of 1638, Roger Williams, with Stukely Westcote and his other associates, founded the “First Baptist Church” of Providence, the first church of that denomination established in America.
Westcote and his wife, whose christian name is not now known, the early records of that church having long since been lost, were both received into its membership at the time of its organization after baptism by Roger Williams. This venerable institution is said by “Backus” to have been the second Baptist church established in the British empire. Knight, however, in his “History of the Six Principle Baptists”, shows that this sect had a much earlier origin, and that they founded a church at Chesterton as early as 1457. The Providence church was for the first century and a half of its existence of the Six Principle sect. As early as 1771 differences arose about the service of the “laying on of hands” as a prerequisite to the communion. A majority held that while this service was not a prerequisite to communing, it was to membership. The large minority of 87 then left and under the lead of Elder Samuel Winsor and Deacon John Dyer founded the first “Six Principle” church in Johnston. But it was not until 1792, under the pastorate of Rev. Stephen Gano, that the Providence church renounced the necessity of the imposition of hands, and became Calvinistic. The first church in Wanick, organized soon after 1648 by Stukeley Westcote and five others, was of the strict “Six Principle” order.
The distinguishing features of this sect, sometimes called “General Baptists” and “Free-will Baptists”, a sect always numerous in Rhode Island, seem to have been the practice of the office of “the laying on of hands” as a condition of admission, the rejection of infant baptism, and of the doctrine of predestination and election, and a belief that by obedience man may attain here a measurable degree of perfection. Their creed is embodied in Heb. vi. 1-2.

On the 30th day of January, 1644, Westcote bears witness under oath to the depredations and outrages committed upon the property and the persons of the first settlers of Warwick by the authorities of Massachusetts Bay, because they had refused to subject themselves and their lands to the pretended jurisdiction of that Province, and how their provisions and arms were seized, how their cattle were killed and furniture destroyed, how their houses were fired and their women and children forced to flee in canoes to the neighboring islands for safety. After surrendering to a superior armed force sent against them, eight men (the ninth, Shotten, having died about that time of the hardships he had suffered), living quietly in their rude homes in the woods of the ancient Shawomet, upon lands they had purchased of the chief sachems and beyond the acknowledged jurisdiction of any patent, were taken under military guard prisoners to Boston. Arriving there, they were tried, not upon the charges for which they had been arrested, that of disloyalty, but for heterodoxy, --their religion was wrong. On the third day of the 9th mo., 1643, they were convicted and sentenced to hard labor in different towns, to wear iron balls upon their limbs, and if they escaped or “published their heresies”, then they were to be punished with death. On the seventh day of the 1st mo. 1643-44, after suffering these indignities for four months, they were pardoned upon the conditions that they should neither return to Providence nor to their former homes at Shawomet. An impartial historian has declared that this proceeding forms one of the darkest pages in the early history of Massachusetts.

It was not until many years after the purchase of Shawomet from Myantonomy that Massachusetts relinquished all claim to jurisdiction over the settlers at Warwick, leaving them in the unmolested enjoyment of their property and religion.

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