Their chief grievance during imprisonment seems to have been that they were compelled to attend the Sunday services in the churches, and be “preached at” by the Puritan ministers. “They brought us forth unto their congregations to hear their ministers,” says Gorton, with a grim humor, illuminated by some knowledge of natural history, “which was meat to be digested, but only by the hearte or stomacke of an ostrich.”[41] Pastor Ward, of Ipswich, who visited one of them—Richard Carder, an old neighbor of his in England—while in prison, and urged him to recant his heresies, said by way of encouragement, “it shall be no disparagement to you, for here is our revered elder, Mr. Cotton, who ordinarily preacheth that publickely one yeare, that the next yeare hee publickely repents of, and shows him selfe to bee very sorrowful to the congregation.”[42] As his sly dig at Mr. Cotton would indicate, Pastor Ward was entirely sound in his own theology. This appears also in his “Simple Cobbler of Agawam,” where, with a spicy use of capitals, and vigorous if not elegant English, he denounces the brains of those who advocate “Libertie of Conscience in matters of Religion,” as “parboiled in impious ignorance.” V SHAWOMET BECOMES WARWICK After his release, in the spring of 1643-44, Gorton returned through Shawomet, where he was forbidden to linger, to Portsmouth, where he and his friends were received with open arms, and where he was shortly elected to a magistracy on the very scene of his former persecutions. Thus far the Atherton Company appeared to have made substantial progress in its efforts to obtain possession of the Shawomet lands, and Massachusetts seemed likely to succeed in throwing a girdle of unfriendly possessions around the Providence Plantations, thereby separating them from the Aquidneck settlements, and securing a permanent control over Narragansett Bay. By the submission of Arnold and the malcontents of Providence, they had obtained a show of authority over the Pawtuxet or Popaquinepaug territory. Winthrop had secured possession of Prudence Island in Narragansett Bay by purchasing the half originally owned by Roger Williams,[43] and now with a marvellous inconsistency, held the whole by a title derived solely from Miantonomi, the chief sachem of the Narragansetts. If he could maintain his denial of the rights of Gorton to the Shawomet lands claimed by even a stronger title, he would succeed in his efforts to divide the Narragansett settlements and establish the claims of Massachusetts. With this end in view, the Massachusetts authorities built a block-house for Pomham on Warwick Neck, and temporarily succeeded in excluding the Gortonists from their Shawomet possessions.