at Aquidneck, Coddington and several others left the colony, establishing the settlement of Newport at the south end of the island. The freemen of Pocasset changed the name of their town to Portsmouth. They adopted a new government which provided for trial by jury and separation of church and state. The men who accompanied Coddington to Newport tended to be the strongest leaders; several became presidents or governors of the entire united colony after 1646, such as Coggeshall, Nicholas Easton, William Brenton, Jeremy Clarke, and Henry Bull. On 12 March 1640, the towns of Portsmouth and Newport agreed to re-unite. Coddington became governor of the island, and William Hutchinson was chosen as one of his assistants. The towns were to remain autonomous with laws made by the citizens. During her tenure in Portsmouth, Hutchinson developed a new philosophy concerning religion. She persuaded her husband to resign from his position as a magistrate, as Roger Williams put it, "because of the opinion, which she had newly taken up, of the unlawfulness of magistracy." Hutchinson's husband William died some time after June 1641 at the age of 55, the same age at which Anne's father had died. He was buried in Portsmouth. No record of his death exists because there was no established church, which would have been the customary repository for such records. New Netherland Not long after the settlement of Aquidneck Island, the Massachusetts Bay Colony made some serious threats to annex the island and the entire Narragansett Bay area, causing Hutchinson and other settlers much anxiety. This compelled her to move totally out of the reach of the Bay colony and its sister colonies in Connecticut and New Haven and move into the jurisdiction of the Dutch. Hutchinson went to New Netherland some time after the summer of 1642 with seven of her children, a son-in-law, and several servants—16 total persons by several accounts. There they settled near an ancient landmark called Split Rock, not far from what became the Hutchinson River in northern Bronx, New York City. Other Rhode Island families were in the area, including the Throckmortons and the Cornells. By one account, Hutchinson bought her land from John Throckmorton (for whom Throggs Neck is named) who had earlier been a settler of Providence with Roger Williams, but was now living in New Netherland. The Hutchinsons stayed temporarily in an abandoned house while a permanent house was