Research topic: John Clarke

John Clarke 1609-76, one of the founders of Rhode Island, b. Westhorpe, Suffolk, England. He emigrated to Boston in 1637 and shortly thereafter joined Anne Hutchinson (with whom he had sided in the antinomian controversy) and William Coddington in founding (1638) Portsmouth on Aquidneck (Rhode Island). The next year, he and Coddington withdrew to found Newport, where he was both physician and Baptist pastor. Clarke favored the 1647 union of the Aquidneck settlements with Providence and Warwick and in 1651 went with Roger Williams to England to defend the union against Coddington's attacks.... Read more