We have seen that in 1643 Roger Williams had been sent to England as agent to solicit a charter for the three colonies of Narragansett Bay. He found the King at open war with the Parliament, and the administration of the colonies entrusted to the Earl of Warwick and a joint committee of the two Houses. Of the details of the negotiation little is known, but on the 14th of March of the following year, a "free and absolute charter was granted as the Incorporation of Providence Plantations in Narragansett Bay in New England." It was not such as Charles would have given. But one fetter was placed upon the free action of the people--"that the laws, constitutions, punishments for the civil government of the said plantation be conformable to the laws of England"--and that was made powerless by the qualifying condition that the conformity should extend only "so far as the nature and constitution of that place will admit." Civil government and civil laws were the only government and laws which it recognized; and the absence of any allusion to religious freedom in it shows how firmly and wisely Williams avoided every form of expression which might seem to recognize the power to grant or to deny that inalienable right. The regulation of the "general government" in its "relation to the rest of the plantations in America," was reserved "to the Earl and Commissioners." Yet more than three years were allowed to pass before it went into full force as a bond of union for the four towns. Then, in May, 1647, the corporators met at Portsmouth in General Court of Election, and, accepting the charter, proceeded to organize a government in harmony with its provisions. Warwick, although not named in the charter, was admitted to the same privileges with her larger and more flourishing sisters. This new government was in reality a government of the people, to whose final decision in their General Assembly all questions were submitted. "And now," says the preamble to the code, "sith our charter gives us powere to governe ourselves and such other as come among us, and by such a forme of Civill Government as by the voluntairie consent, &c., shall be found most suitable to our estate and condition: "It is agreed by this present Assembly thus incorporate and by this present act declared, that the form of Government established in _Providence Plantations_, is Democratical; that is to say, a Government held by y^e free and voluntairie consent of all or the greater part of the free Inhabitants." In accordance with this fundamental principle all laws were first discussed in Town Meeting, then submitted to the General Court, a committee of six men from each town freely chosen, and finally referred to the General Assembly. The General Court possessed, also, the power of originating laws, by recommending a draft of law to the towns, upon whose approval the draft obtained the force of law till the next meeting of the General Assembly.