He left Plymouth shortly but, being winter, his wife and children were allowed to remain there while he proceeded to Portsmouth on Aquidneck Island (which was officially called Rhode Island), arriving in late December 1638. Here he became a resident, and on the last day of April 1639 he and 28 others signed a compact calling themselves subjects of King Charles and forming a "civil body politick." Things were no better for Gorton in Portsmouth than they had been in Plymouth. In 1640, his servant maid assaulted a woman whose cow had trespassed on his land, and this servant was ordered to court. Gorton refused to allow her to appear and went in her place. With his hostile attitude towards the judges, he was indicted on 14 counts, some of which were calling the magistrates "Just Asses" and calling a freeman in open court "saucy boy and Jack-an-Apes." Governor Coddington said, "All you that own the King take away Gorton and carry him to prison," to which Gorton replied, "All you that own the King take away Coddington and carry him to prison." Since he had previously been imprisoned, he was sentenced to be whipped, and soon left Portsmouth for Providence Plantation. Trouble continued to follow Gorton to Providence, where his democratic ideas concerning church and state led to a division of sentiment in this town. On 8 March 1641, Roger Williams wrote to Massachusetts magistrate John Winthrop, "Master Gorton having abused high and low at Aquidneck, is now bewitching and bemadding poor Providence, both with his unclean and his foul censures of all the ministers of this country (for which myself in Christ's name have withstood him) and also denying all visible and external ordinances in depth of Familism." Being a bitter partisan by nature, Gorton used his talent and energy to consolidate many discontented settlers into a destructive party in the otherwise peaceful settlement established by Williams. This group became known as the Gortonists or Gortonites. Gorton was never received as an inhabitant in Providence because of his disorderly course. At this point, he moved once again to an area called Pawtuxet along the Pawtuxet River, about five miles south of the settlement at Providence (later the dividing line between the Rhode Island towns of Cranston and Warwick). Pawtuxet and Warwick At Pawtuxet, there was immediate friction and a rift among the settlers, with a majority of them