Excerpt from Annals of Trinity Church, Newport, Rhode Island, 1698-1821 Wantons were Quakers when the first missionary Of the Church Of England was sent here, and the statutes had been so framed as to give freedom to all in matters of conscience. The consequence was, that in I 700 one-half Of the inhabitants were Quakers, who owned nearly one-third Of the meeting-houses. But the church had a zealous advocate in Sir Francis Nicholson, who found a field white unto harvest when he came to America, on a mission quite apart from it. He was lt.-governor of New York, under Sir Edmund Andros, successively Governor Of Virginia and Maryland, and, later, the active agent of the Crown in the effort to wrest Canada from the French. But with all his public duties, he had time and means to give to the church, and his in uence was exerted in her behalf. He had occasion to come to Newport, and it is the received Opinion that he secured the services of the Rev. Mr. Lockyer, who began to preach here about 1694, and soon drew around him a little ock. For four years the work had gone on under Mr. Lockyer, of whom it is to be regretted that we know so little, and the desire to have a church edifice and a settled minister had steadily increased. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."