Sidenote: Characteristics of New Haven. At first, New Haven failed to prosper; but after a few years, with the increase of trade, better times prevailed, and by the close of the century the town was noted for the wealth of its inhabitants and their fine houses. Education was greatly encouraged, and there were considerable shipping interests; but the ecclesiastical system was peculiar, and suffrage greatly restricted. There were, in consequence, frequent outbursts of dissatisfaction among the people. The colony thus had conspicuous elements of weakness, and was finally absorbed by Connecticut. 60. Rhode Island founded (1636-1654). Sidenote: Roger Williams. In 1636, with five of his disciples, Roger Williams, driven from Massachusetts as a reformer of a dangerous type, established the town of Providence, at the head of Narragansett Bay. Sidenote: Anne Hutchinson. The following year (1637) a party of Anne Hutchinson's followers--also expelled from Massachusetts because of heretical opinions--settled on the island of Aquedneck (afterwards Rhode Island), eighteen miles to the south. Mrs. Hutchinson joined them in 1638, and the town was eventually called Portsmouth. Sidenote: Newport established. Both communities at once attracted from Massachusetts people who had either been expelled from that colony or were not in entire harmony with it, and by the close of 1638 Providence contained sixty persons, and Portsmouth nearly as many. The next year fifty-nine of the Portsmouth people, headed by the chief magistrate, Coddington, dissenting from some of Mrs. Hutchinson's "new heresies," withdrew to the southern end of the island and settled Newport; but the two towns reunited in 1640, under the name of Rhode Island, with Coddington as governor. Sidenote: The Providence agreement. Each of these colonies, Providence and Rhode Island, was at first an independent body politic. It is interesting to note their original compacts. The Providence agreement (1636), signed by Roger Williams and twelve of his sympathizers, was as follows: "We whose names are hereunder, desirous to inhabit in the Town of Providence, do promise to subject ourselves in active or passive obedience to all such orders or agreements as shall be made for the public good of the body, in an orderly way, by the major assent of the present inhabitants, masters of families, incorporated together into a town fellowship, and such others whom they shall admit unto them, only in civil things." Five freemen, called arbitrators, managed public affairs, and for some years there appear to have been no fixed rules for their guidance. Sidenote: The Portsmouth declaration.