as President of the colony, but Coddington had been successful in gaining his commission to put the island towns under his own authority, so Gorton presided only over the plantations of Providence and Warwick. In 1652, Smith was once again selected as president and Gorton was once again the assistant from Warwick. A remarkable statute during this administration was likely authored by Gorton, an act for the emancipation of slaves. Following his brief time as a magistrate, Gorton remained active in the civil affairs of Warwick. He was chosen as a commissioner during a majority of the years from 1651 to 1663, and his name appears on a list of Warwick freemen in 1655. He was one of several prominent citizens named in Rhode Island's Royal Charter of 1663. Also, he was the Warwick Deputy to the General Assembly for four years during the last half of the 1660s. He last served in a public capacity in 1670 when he was 78 years old. In 1675, Gorton had received word that the Indians living in the Connecticut Colony intended to invade the Narragansett country, and later in the same year King Phillips War broke out in the New England colonies. The Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations took no active role in provoking the conflict, but its geographical location caused it to suffer more than any other colony. The people of Warwick were forced to flee their homes during the war and returned in the spring of 1677 to a barren wasteland and the task of rebuilding. Gorton did not leave a will, but several deeds to his heirs on 27 November 1677 distributed his properties, and in one of these instruments he called himself "professor of the mysteries of Christ." He was dead by 10 December, though the exact date of his death was not recorded. He is buried in the Samuel Gorton Cemetery, Rhode Island Historic Cemetery, Warwick #67, at 422 Samuel Gorton Avenue in Warwick, and his grave is marked with a governor's medallion and an uninscribed field stone. Beliefs, demonization, and restitution Gorton left a comfortable life in England to enjoy liberty of conscience in the English colonies of North America. According to Rhode Island historian Thomas Bicknell, he was a man of intense individualism who recognized three pillars of power: "God, the Supreme One; the King, his vicegerent; and himself, the individual man. Between