Nicholas Easton
Easton supported the dissident ministers John Wheelwright and Anne Hutchinson during the Antinomian Controversy, and was disarmed in 1637, and then banished from the Massachusetts colony the following year.
In Newport, Easton became active in civil affairs, serving as assistant to the governor for several years, and in 1650 was elected President of the four towns of the colony.
[3] She died in 1630, shortly after the birth and death of their fourth child, and in March 1634 Easton and his two surviving sons boarded the Mary & John at Southampton for passage to New England.
[3] Easton's first residence in New England was the settlement of Ipswich where he was admitted to the church sometime before September 1634,[4] and where he was appointed as overseer of powder and shot that month.
[6] During the Antinomian Controversy from 1636 to 1638, Easton became a supporter of the dissident ministers John Wheelwright and Anne Hutchinson, and on 20 November 1637 he and many other followers of these preachers, were disarmed, being ordered to deliver their guns, pistols, swords, shot, etc.
[5] 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 [Aquidneck Island] fell into new errors daily.
One Nicholas Easton, a tanner, taught that gifts and graces were that antichrist mentioned Thes[salonians]., 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.
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.
[8] Winthrop wrote periodically about affairs in Rhode Island, seeming to always find justification for the removal of its leaders from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
[10] A serious issue rising during Easton's first term as president concerned disputed titles to land at Pawtuxet (later Cranston, Rhode Island) and Warwick.
"[10] Clarke's fine was paid by a friend, without his knowledge or consent, Crandall returned home on bail, but Holmes was whipped so cruelly that "for many days he could take no rest, except by supporting himself on his elbows and knees.
[12] He brought a letter from the former Massachusetts governor, Sir Harry Vane, always a staunch friend of the Rhode Island colonists, beseeching the people of the colony to reconcile their feuds.
[12] Easton appeared on a list of Newport freemen in 1655, was a commissioner in 1660, and then for the last ten years of his life became seriously involved in the leadership of the colony beginning in 1665.
[12] However, for the Rhode Island colony came a very positive development in the form of the Royal Charter of 1663, and Easton was one of several prominent citizens named in the document.
[8][12] He died in August 1675 at the age of 81 years, and was buried in the Coddington Cemetery, sometimes called the Friends' Burial Ground, in Newport next to his second wife, Christian.
[15] Easton's other son, John was involved in colonial politics virtually his entire adult life, and served as governor himself for five terms between 1690 and 1695.
