Winthrop and the Warwick Patent

Winthrop and the Warwick Patent. . , The Earl of Warwick, President of the Council for New England, received from King James I, the right to settle the area from Narragansett River to the Pacific. In 1631 he conveyed the Patent to 15 Puritan Lords and Gentlemen for refuge in case the Puritan Revolution failed and King Charles I be restored to the throne. Three leading Patentees were William Fiennes, Lord Brooke and Colonel George Fenwick. , In 1635 John Winthrop Jr., son of the Governor of Massachusetts, was commissioned "Governor of the River Colony” by Patentees. He arrived in Boston in October 1635 and learned that the Dutch were planning to occupy Pasbeshauke (place at the mouth of the river) so he dispatched a small bark thither with 20 carpenters and other workmen under Lieutenant Edward Gibbons and Sergeant Simon Willard to the mouth of the river with directions “to take possession of the place and raise some building.” , They landed November 24, 1635 and tore down the Dutch Coat of Arms and mounted a shield on which they painted a grinning face. In a few days a Dutch ship approached but when they saw the soldiers and two well-placed cannon they withdrew. Winthrop changed the name of the point to Sayebrooke in honor of Viscount Saye and Sele (William Fiennes) and Lorde Brooke. , Dedicated to the memory of Simon Willard, first Willard immigrant to America, who also founded Concord, Massachusetts.