Randall Holden
Randall Holden (1692) was an early inhabitant of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, one of the original founders of Portsmouth, and one of the co-founders of the town of Warwick. He came to New England from Salisbury, Wiltshire, England and is first recorded as one of the signers of the Portsmouth Compact. Following a few years on Aquidneck Island (called Rhode Island at the time), he joined Samuel Gorton and ten others to establish the town of Warwick in early 1643 on land purchased from the Indian sachems. The first few years of the Warwick settlement were fraught with difficulty; Massachusetts Bay Colony claimed their land and arrested them for supposed infractions against the sachems. The Warwick settlers were hauled off to face trial in Boston, but the charges had nothing to do with the sachems; instead, they were charged with heresy and sedition based on their religious views. They were sent to various jails in the Boston area, and they were then banished from the Massachusetts colony—and from their own Warwick lands. Holden soon after joined Gorton and John Greene on a trip to England to seek redress for the wrongs committed against them. Holden and