Samuel Gorton

Samuel Gorton c.1592-1677, Anglo-American religious leader, founder of Warwick , R.I., b. near Manchester, England. Seeking religious freedom, he emigrated to America (1637) but, because of his unorthodox religious teachings, was banished successively from Boston and Plymouth. At Portsmouth, R.I., he joined Anne Hutchinson in ousting William Coddington (1639) but on Coddington's return to power was himself turned out. In 1642, Gorton bought Native American land south of Providence and founded Shawomet. Massachusetts authorities, with designs on that territory, jailed him (1643) for holding erroneous religious opinions. The earl of Warwick finally obtained for Gorton freedom from molestation on his land, which he renamed (1648) Warwick and on which he preached to colonists and Native Americans. His followers called themselves "Gortonites" for many decades after his death. His tenets included denial of the Trinity, denial of actual heaven and hell, and a belief that every man should be his own intercessor.

Gorton, Samuel (c.1592–1677), founder of the ‘Gortonites’. A London clothier, c.1636 he sailed for Boston, Mass., in the hope of enjoying complete religious liberty, but there he encountered difficulties with the civil authorities. He came to hold many unorthodox doctrines, e.g. he denied that of the Trinity and professed belief in conditional immortality. His followers survived as a sect until the 18th cent.

Gorton, Samuel (c.1592–1677), came to Boston from England (1637), but was soon banished because of his Antinomian beliefs. He followed Roger Williams to Providence, but seceded from his group to found Shawomet, R.I. (1643). Imprisoned in 1644 as an enemy of “civil authority among the people of God,” he spent four years in exile in England, returning (1648) to live peaceably at Shawomet, which he renamed Warwick in honor of his protector. Gorton contended that Christ was the only proper object of worship, denied the Trinity, claimed that each man should be his own priest, wished to abolish all outward ordinances, taught a conditional immortality dependent upon individual character, claimed that by union with Christ one partook of God's perfection, and denied the existence of heaven and hell. Among his pamphlets setting forth these theories were Simplicities Defense against Seven‐Headed Policies (1646), a reply to Edward Winslow's Hypocrisie Unmasked (1646); Saltmarsh Returned from the Dead (1655); and An Antidote Against the Common Plague of the World (1657). His followers, the Gortonites, persisted as a distinct group for nearly a century.