Wickes, John, 1609 - 1676

John Wickes, one of the early settlers of Warwick, Rhode Island, immigrated with his wife Mary and daughter Ann to New England from Staines, Middlesex, England, in 1635. He reportedly met Samuel Gorton at Plymouth and later settled at Shawomet.  He was involved in the fraudulent purchase of Pumham’s land with other Gortonists. When the sachem complained to the Massachusetts Bay authorities in 1643, Wickes was summoned to Boston and sentenced to hard labor and imprisonment at Ipswich for the fraudulent purchase.  After several months of incarceration, he returned to Shawomet.  During King Philip’s War, he was killed and beheaded close to his home on March 17, 1676. Wilkins Updike, History of the Episcopal Church in Narragansett, Rhode Island: Including a History of the Other Episcopal Churches in the State; with an App., Containing a Reprint of a Work Now Extremely Rare, Entitled, "America Dissected" (New York: H. M. Onderdonk, 1847), 381-382; 410-411. Alden T. Vaughan, New England Frontier: Puritans and Indians, 1620-1675 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995), 348.