The cowardly Andros was forced to yield to the commander's bold spirit and, in a towering passion, returned to New York, hurling the most bitter anathemas against Connecticut and Captain Bull.
It was more than a dozen years after this event before anything happened to disturb the public repose of Connecticut; but as that event belongs to another period, we will omit it for the present.
Rhode Island was favored with a charter from Parliament, granted in 1644 to Roger Williams.

The charter was very liberal, and in religion and politics the people were absolutely free.

The general assembly, in a code of laws adopted in 1647, declared that "all men might walk as their conscience permitted them--every one in the name of his God." Almost every religious belief might have been encountered there; "so if a man lost his religious opinions, he might have been sure to find them in some village in Rhode Island." Society was kept in a continual healthful agitation, and though the disputes were sometimes stormy, they never were brutal.

There was a remarkable propriety of conduct on all occasions, and the political agitations brought to the surface the best men in the colony to administer public affairs.
Two years after the overthrow and execution of Charles I., 1651, the executive council of state in England granted to William Coddington a commission for governing the islands within the limits of the Rhode Island charter.

This threatened a dismemberment of the little empire and its absorption by neighboring colonies.