Portsmouth Compact
1638 document establishing Portsmouth, Rhode Island
The Portsmouth Compact was a document signed on March 7, 1638, that established the settlement of Portsmouth, which is now a town in the US state of Rhode Island.
History
The document was written and signed by a group of Christian dissidents who were seeking religious freedom from the governmental oversight of the Massachusetts Bay Colony by moving to Aquidneck Island to set up a new colony. Among this group was Anne Hutchinson, who had been banished from Massachusetts Bay following the Antinomian Controversy there.
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."
Text and signatories
The text of the Portsmouth Compact:
The 7th Day of the First Month, 1638.
We whose names are underwritten do hereby solemnly in the presence of Jehovah incorporate ourselves into a Bodie Politick and as He shall help, will submit our persons, lives and estates unto our Lord Jesus Christ, the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, and to all those perfect and most absolute laws of His given in His Holy Word of truth, to be guided and judged thereby.
It was signed by 23 men:
William Coddington
John Clarke
William Hutchinson (husband of Anne Hutchinson)
John Coggeshall
William Aspinwall
Samuel Wilbore
John Porter
John Sanford
Edward Hutchinson, Jr.
Thomas Savage
William Dyre (husband of Mary Dyer)
William Freeborn
Phillip Shearman
John Walker
Richard Carder
William Baulston
Edward Hutchinson, Sr.
Henry Bull X his marke
Randall Holden
Thomas Clarke (brother of John)
John Johnson
William Hall
John Brightman
The last four names show erasure marks or strikethroughs for unknown reasons. The first three of those four were among the first settlers of Newport, arriving in 1638, and the same may be true of John Brightman.
“Portsmouth Compact” enters the record as 1638 document establishing Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Portsmouth, Compact and document can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Portsmouth Compact” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Portsmouth, Compact and document provides the most credible route into that argument.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7232435. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1638.
A single description cannot reconcile every naming convention, rebuilding phase or administrative transfer associated with a place. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Portsmouth Compact” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.