The Portsmouth Compact was a document signed on March 7, 1638 that established the settlement of Portsmouth, which is now a town in the state of Rhode Island. It was the first document in history that severed both political and religious ties with mother England.
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The document was written and signed in Boston by a group of men who followed Anne Hutchinson, a banished Christian dissident from Massachusetts, to seek religious freedom in Rhode Island. The signers were ready to move to Aquidneck Island to set up a new colony and had been disarmed by the Puritan leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
The purpose of the Portsmouth Compact was to set up a new, independent colony that was Christian in character but non-sectarian in governance. It has been called "the first instrument for governing as a true democracy." [1]
The text [2] of the Portsmouth Compact:
In the margin are the following Bible citations:
It was signed by 23 men:
The last four names, for unknown reasons, show erasure marks and/or strikethroughs. Of those four—Thomas Clarke, John Johnson, William Hall and John Brightman—the first three are known to have been among the first settlers of Newport, Rhode Island, arriving in 1638, and the same may be true of John Brightman.
