' In the course
of their wanderings they fell in with Williams, and settled near him.
Clark was perhaps the most prominent man in the Plantations, filled many
public offices, and was the commissioner who afterward secured for the
colony the famous charter that served as the State Constitution till 1842.
Obediah Holmes, who succeeded him as Baptist minister of Newport, is less
well known. He was educated at Oxford, and when he emigrated he settled at
Salem; from thence he went to Seaconk, where he joined the church under
Mr. Newman. Here he soon fell into trouble for resisting what he
maintained was an "unrighteous act" of his pastor's; in consequence he and
several more renounced the communion, and began to worship by themselves;
they were baptized and thereafter they were excommunicated; the inevitable
indictment followed, and they, too, took refuge in Rhode Island.
[Footnote: Holmes's Narrative, Backus, i. 213.]
William Witter [Footnote: For the following events, see "_Ill Newes from
New England" Mass. Hist. Coll._ fourth series, vol. ii.] of Lynn was an
aged Baptist, who had already been prosecuted, but, in 1651, being blind
and infirm, he asked the Newport church to send some of the brethren to
him, to administer the communion, for he found himself alone in
Massachusetts. [Footnote: Backus, i.
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