Page:History of Barrington, Rhode Island (Bicknell).djvu/102

70 Mr. Willett, the master of the house, being reading the Bible, his countenance was more solemn than at other times, so as he did not look cheerfully upon them as he was wont to do; whereupon they went out and told their fellows that their purpose was discovered. They asked them how it could be. The others told them that they knew it by Mr. Willett's countenance, and that they had discovered it by a book he was reading. Whereupon they gave over their design." He continued at Kennebec, as agent, for six years or a little more, when he returned to Plymouth, and on July 6, 1636, married Mary, daughter of John Brown, then one of the Assistants in the government of Plymouth. From Plymouth he removed to Dorchester and returned again to Plymouth between 1641 and 1646.

In 1647 Mr. Willett was elected to the command of the military company at Plymouth, as successor of Myles Standish. Since the settlement at Plymouth, this brave warrior and statesman had quelled the rising hostilities of the natives by prompt and decisive action, and Standish, who had never feared to face mortal dangers, now resigned the sword to the no less brave and patriotic Willett. The captaincy of the Plymouth militia was no sinecure's office, and the duties were sterner than a holiday parade. The leadership in such a time indicates a rank which in the times of the revolution might have secured the victories of Saratoga or Trenton, or in the Great Rebellion have achieved the glories of Vicksburg or of Gettysburg.

In 1651, we find the name of Capt. Thomas Willett among the assistants in the Plymouth Court, an office to which he was annually elected till 1665, when other business obliged him to decline a position which he had filled for fourteen years with great usefulness to the colony and with signal honor to himself.

The first evidence of his removal from Plymouth to Rehoboth, is found on the town records, under date of Feb. 21, 1662, when in town meeting it was voted "that Mr. Willett should have liberty to take up five hundred or six hundred