USA > Connecticut > New London County > New London > History of New London, Connecticut, From the First Survey of the Coast in 1612 to 1852 > Part 20
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In 1680, the magistrates of Connecticut, giving an account of the colony to the Lords of Trade and Plantations, say :
" Our people in this colony, are some strict Congregational men, others more large Congregational men, and some moderate Presbyterians, &c .- there are four or six seventh-day men, and about so many more Quakers."1
These Quakers and Seventh-day men were probably all in New London, and nearly all in the Rogers family. The elder James
1 Hinman's Antiquities, p. 142.
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HISTORY OF NEW LONDON.
Rogers was an upright, circumspect man. There is no account of any dealings with him and his wife on account of their secession from Mr. Bradstreet's church. No vote of expulsion or censure is recorded. Of his latter years little is known. Elder Hubbard, of Newport, is quoted by Backus as stating that Mr. Rogers had one of his limbs severely bruised by the wheel of a loaded cart that passed over it, and that he himself saw him when he had remained for six weeks in a most deplorable condition, strenuously refusing the use of means to alleviate his sufferings, but patiently waiting in accordance with his principles, to be relieved by faith. Whether he recovered from this injury or not is unknown. His death occurred in February, 1687-8, when the government of Sir Edmund Andross was para- mount in New England. His will was therefore proved in Boston. The first settlement of the estate was entirely harmonious. The children in accordance with the earnest request of their father, made an amicable division of the estate, which was sanctioned by the Gen- eral Court, May 12th, 1692.
The original will of Mr. Rogers is on file in the probate office of New London. It is in the handwriting of his son John, and remark- able for the simple solemnity of its preamble.
" The Last Will and Testament of James Rogers, Sen", being in perfect memory and understanding but under the hand of God by sickness :-- this I leave with my wife and children, sons and daughters, I being old and knowing that the time of my departure is at hand.
" What I have of this world I leave among you, desiring you not to fall out or contend about it ; but let your love one to another appear more than to the estate I leave with you, which is but of this world.
" And for your comfort I signify to you that I have a perfect assurance of an interest in Jesus Christ and an eternal happy state in the world to come, and do know and see that my name is written in the book of life, and therefore mourn not for me, as they that are without hope."
In a subsequent part of the document he says :
" If any difference should arise, &c., my will is, that there shall be no law- ing among my children before earthly judges, but that the controversy be ended by lot, and so I refer to the judgment of God, and as the lot comes forth, so shall it be."
In this respect unfortunately the will of the father was never ac- complished : his children, notwithstanding their first pacific arrange- ment, engaged afterward in long and acrimonious contention, respect- ing boundaries, in the course of which earthly judges were often obliged to interfere and enforce a settlement.
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HISTORY OF NEW LONDON.
Soon after John Rogers connected himself with the Sabbatarians, his wife left him and returned to her father. In May, 1675, she ap- plied to the legislature for a divorce, grounding her plea not only up- on the heterodoxy of her husband, but upon certain alleged immoral- ities. The court, after the delay of nearly a year and a half, granted her petition.
At a session of the General Court, held at Hartford, October 12th, 1676 :
" The Court having considered the petition of Elizabeth Rogers, the wife of John Rogers, for a release from her conjugal bond to her husband, with all the allegations and proofs presented, to clear the righteousness of her desires, do find just cause to grant her desire, and do free her from her conjugal bond to the said John Rogers."
By a subsequent act of Assembly, (October, 1677,) she was allowed to retain her two children wholly under her own charge; the court giving as a reason the heterodoxy of Rogers, both in opinion and practice, he having declared in open court that he utterly renounced the visible worship of New England, and regarded the Christian Sabbath as a mere invention.
Rogers was incensed at these decisions of the court. The bill of divorce did not specify any offense on his part, as the base upon which it was granted, and he ever afterward maintained that they had taken away his wife without rendering to him, or to the public, any reason why they had done it. He seems to have long cherished the hope that she would repent of her desertion, and return to him ; but in less than two years she married again.
" Peter Pratt was married unto Elisabeth Griswold, that was divorced from John Rogers, 5th of August, 1679,"1
The children of Rogers remained with their mother during their childhood, but both when they became old enough to act for them- selves, preferred to live with their father. Elizabeth was sent to him by her mother, of her own free will, when she was about fourteen years of age, and resided with him till 1689 or 1690, when she was married to Stephen Prentis, of Bruen's Neck. At her wedding, her brother John, then about fifteen years of age, came also to his father, by permission of his mother, to stay as long as he pleased. She after- ward sent a constable forcibly to reclaim him, and he was seized and carried back to Lyme ; yet he soon returned to his father, embraced
1 Recorded in Lyme.
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his doctrines,1 and pursued a similar course of itinerant testimony against the public worship of the land.
An agreement was signed in 1687, by which Elizabeth, daughter of Matthew Griswold, senior, engages to relinquish all claim to the Mamacock farm, " provided John Rogers will pay her £30 and never trouble her father about the farm again." By this arrangement the farm reverted to Rogers, and his son, John Rogers, junior, marrying his cousin, Bathsheba Smith, settled at Mamacock. There, not- withstanding his long testimony and his many weary trials and im- prisonments, he reared to maturity a family of eighteen children, most of them like their parents, sturdy Rogerenes.2 Mamacock, and the neighboring highland over which they spread, has ever since been known as Quaker Hill.
Peter Pratt, the second husband of Elizabeth Griswold, died March 24th, 1688. Shortly afterward she contracted a third mar- riage with Matthew Beckwith, 2d.3 By the second marriage with Mr. Pratt, she had a son, Peter, who while a young man, studying for the profession of the law, in New London, very naturally renewed his youthful intimacy with his half-brother, John Rogers, junior, of Mamacock. This brought him often into the company of the elder Rogers, to whose exhortations he listened complacently, till at length embracing his dogmas and becoming his disciple, he received bap- tism at his hands, and endured fines, imprisonment and public abuse, on account of his Quakerism. But after a time, leaving New Lon- don, and entering upon other associations, he relinquished the Roger- ene cause, and made a public acknowledgment that he had labored under a delusion. Still further to manifest the sincerity of his re- cantation, he wrote an account of his lapse and recovery, entitled :
" The Prey taken from the Strong, or an Historical Account of the Recovery of one from the dangerous errors of Quakerisın."
In this narrative, Rogers is drawn, not only as an obstinate, heter- odox enthusiast, but many revolting circumstances are added, which would justify the greatest odium ever cast upon him. It was not published till 1724, three years after the death of Rogers. He could not therefore answer for himself, but the indignation of the son was
1 In the phraseology of the sect, he discipled in with him immediately.
2 John Rogers, 2d, by his two wives had twenty children: two died in infancy.
3 By this third marriage she had one daughter, Griswold Beckwith, afterward the wife of Eliakim Cooley, junior, of Springfield.
18*
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roused, and in defense of his father, he entered into controversy with his brother, and published a rejoinder, from which portions of the pre- ceding narrative have been taken. He meets the charges against the moral and domestic character of his father, with a bold denial of their truth ; but his erratic course in matters of faith and religious practice, he makes no attempt to palliate, these being points in which he himself, and the whole sect, gloried. He denies, however, that his father was properly classed among Quakers, observing :
" In his lifetime he was the only man in Conn. colony, I have ever heard of, that did publicly in print oppose the Quakers in those main principles wherein they differ from other sects."
But the term Quaker had been firmly fixed upon them by their opponents, and they were customarily confounded with the Ranters, or Ranting Quakers, known in the early days of the colony. Yet they never came under the severe excision of the law enacted against those people in 1656 and 1658 ; that is, they were never for- cibly transported out of the colony, nor were others prohibited from intercourse with them. Yet John Rogers states that under the pro- visions of this law, his books were condemned and burnt as heretical. The law itself was disallowed and made void by an act of the Queen in Council, October 11th, 1705. There were other laws, however, by which the Rogerenes were convicted. By the early code of Con- necticut, absence from public worship was to be visited by a penalty of five shillings ; labor on the Sabbath, twenty shillings; and the per- formance of church ordinances by any other person than an approved minister of the colony, or an attendance thereupon, £5.
Though in most of the cases of arrest and punishment, the Roger- enes were the aggressors, and drew down the arm of the law on their own heads, it must be acknowledged that they encountered a vigorous and determined opposition. Offense was promptly met by penalty. Attempts were made to weary them out, and break them up by a series of fines, imposed upon presentments of the grand jury. These fines were many times repeated, and the estates of the offenders melted under the seizures of the constable, as snow melts before the sun. The course was a cruel one, and by no means popular. At length the magistrates could scarcely find an officer willing to per- form the irksome task of distraining. And it is probable that all penalties would have been silently dropped, had they not kept up the aggressive system of testifying, as it was called; that is, presenting themselves in the religious assemblies of their neighbors, to utter
I
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their testimony against the worship. In this line, John Rogers, and the elder sister, were the principal offenders; often carrying their work into meeting, and interrupting the service with exclamations and protests against what was said or done.
The records of the county court abound with instances to verify these statements. Only a sample will be given :
" April 14th, 1685. Judges upon the bench, Fitch, Avery and Wetherell. John Rogers, James Rogers, Jr., Samuel Beebee, Jr., and Joanna Way, are complained of for profaning God's holy day by servile work, and are grown to that height of impiety as to come at several times into the town to re-baptize several persons ; and when God's people were met together on the Lord's day to worship God, several of them came and made great disturbance, behaving themselves in such a frantic manner as if possessed with a diabolical spirit, so affrighting and amazing that several women swooned and fainted away. John Rogers to be whipped fifteen lashes, and for unlawfully re-baptizing to pay £5. The others to be whipped."
One of the most notorious instances of contempt exhibited by Rogers against the religious worship of his fellow-townsmen, was the sending of a wig to a contribution made in aid of the ministry. This was in derision of the full-bottomed wigs then worn by the clergy. It was sent by some one who deposited it in his name in the contri- bution box that was passed around in meeting. Rogers relished a joke, and was often represented by his opponents as shaking his sides with laughter at the confusion into which they were thrown by his inroads upon them. What course was pursued by the authorities in regard to the wig is not known, but the following candid apology is found on the town book, subscribed by the offender's own hand.
" Whereas I John Rogers of New London did rashly and unadvisedly send a perewigg to the contribution of New London, which did reflectt dishonor up- on that which my neighbours ye inhabitants of New London account the ways and ordinances of God and ministry of the word to the greate offence of them, I doe herebye declare that I am sorry for the sayde action and doe desire all those whom I have offended to accept this my publique acknowledgement as full satisfaction. 27th, 1: 91.1 JOHN ROGERS."
1
The regret here expressed must have been but a temporary emo- tion, as he resumed immediately the same career of offense. In Nov., 1692, besides his customary fines for working on the Sabbath, and for baptizing, he was amerced £4 for entertaining Banks and Case
1 New London Town Rec., lib. 4, folio 46.
1
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HISTORY OF NEW LONDON.
(itinerant exhorters) for a month or more at his house. In 1693 and 1694, he and others of his family were particularly eager to win the notice of the law. Samuel Fox, presented for catching eels on Sunday, said that he made no difference of days ; his wife Bathshua Fox went openly to the meeting-house to proclaim that she had been doing servile work on their Sabbath ; John Rogers accompanied her, interrupting the minister, and proclaiming a similar offense. James Rogers and his wife assaulted the constable as he was rolling away a barrel of beef that he had distrained for the minister's rate, threw scalding water upon him, and recaptured the beef.1
To various offenses of this nature, Rogers added the greater one of trundling a wheelbarrow into the porch of the meeting-house during the time of service ; for which after being set in the stocks he was put into prison, and there kept for a considerable time. While thus held in durance, he hung out of the window a board with the following proclamation attached ;
" I, John Rogers, a servant of Jesus Christ, doth here make an open decla- ration of war against the great red dragon, and against the beast to which he gives power ; and against the false church that rides upon the beast ; and against the false prophets who are established by the dragon and the beast ; and also a proclamation of derision against the sword of the devil's spirit, which is prisons, stocks, whips, fines and revilings, all which is to defend the doctrines of devils."2
On the next Sunday after this writing was hung out, Rogers being allowed the privilege of the prison limits on that day, rushed into the meeting-house during service, and with great noise and vehemence interrupted the minister, and denounced the worship. This led to the issuing of a warrant to remove him to Hartford gaol. The mittimus, dated March 28th, 1694, and signed by James Fitch, assist- ant, sets forth :
" Whereas John Rodgers of New London hath of late set himself in a furious way in direct opposition to the true worship and pure ordinances, and holy in- stitutions of God, as also on the Lord's Day passing out of prison in the time of public worship, running into the meeting-house in a railing and raging man- ner, as being guilty of blasphemy," &c.
1 Records of County Court.
2 Rogers himself in one of his pamphlets gives a copy of this writing. It is also in Benedict's Hist., vol. 2, p. 423.
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HISTORY OF NEW LONDON.
At Hartford he was tried and fined £5, and required to give a bond of £50 not to disturb the churches hereafter, and seated upon the gallows a quarter of an hour with a halter about his neck. . Re- fusing as usual to pay the fine and give the security, he was remand- ed to prison and kept there from his first commitment three years and eight months.
During this imprisonment, according to the account of his son, he was treated with great severity, and at one time taken out and cruelly scourged.1
While Rogers was in prison an attack upon the government and colony appeared, signed by Richard Steer, Samuel Beebe, Jr., Jona- than and James Rogers, accusing them of persecution of dissenters, narrow principles, self-interest, spirit of domineering; and that to compel people to pay for a Presbyterian minister, is against the laws of England, is rapine, robbery and oppression.
A special court was held at New London, Jan. 24th, 1694-5, to consider this libelous paper. The subscribers were fined £5 each, whereupon they appealed to the Court of Assistants at Hartford, which confirming the first decision, they threatened an appeal to. Cesar, that is to the throne of England. In all probability this was never prosecuted.
Rogers had not been long released from prison before he threw himself into the very jaws of the lion, as it were, by provoking a personal collision with Mr. Saltonstall, the minister of the town.
" At a session of the county court held at New London, Sept. 20th, 1698. Members of the Court, Capt. Daniel Wetherell Esq. and justices William Ely and Natheniel Lynde. Mr. Gurdon Saltonstall minister of the gospel plf. pr contra John Rogers Sen', deft in an action of the case for defamation. Whereas you the said John Rogers did sometime in the month of June last past, raise a lying, false and scandalous report against him the said Mr. Gurdon Saltonstall and did publish the same in the hearing of diverse persons, that is to say -- did in their hearing openly declare that the said Saltonstall hav- ing promised to dispute with you publicly on the holy scriptures did contrary to his said engagement shift or wave the said dispute which he had promised you, which said false report he the said Saltonstall complaineth of as to lis great scandall and to his damage unto such value as shall to the said court be made to appear. In this action the jury finds for the plaintiff six hundred pounds, and costs of court, £1, 10." 2
It would be wearisome and useless to enumerate all the instances
1 Answer of John Rogers, Jr., to Peter Pratt.
2 County Court Records.
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HISTORY OF NEW LONDON.
· of collision between Rogers and the authorities of the land, which even at this distance of time might be collected. It is stated by his followers that after his conversion he was near one-third of his life- time confined in prisons. "I have," he observes, writing in 1706, "been sentenced to pay hundreds of pounds, laid in iron chains, cruelly scourged, endured long imprisonments, set in the stocks many hours together," &c. John, the younger, states that his father's suf- ferings continued for more than forty-five years, and adds, " I suppose the like has not been known in the kingdom of England for some ages past."
It was certainly a great error in the early planters of New Eng- land to endeavor to produce uniformity in doctrine by the strong arm of physical force. Was ever religious dissent subdued either by petty annoyance or actual cruelty ? Is it possible ever to make a true convert by persecution ? The principle of toleration was, how- ever, then less clearly understood, and the offenses of the Rogerenes were multiplied and exaggerated both by prejudice and rumor. The crime of blasphemy was one that was often hurled against them. Doubtless a sober mind would not now give so harsh a name, to ex- pressions which our ancestors deemed blasphemous.
In reviewing this controversy we can not avoid acknowledging that there was great blame on both sides, and our sympathies pass alter- nately from one to the other. The course. pursued by the Rogerenes was exceedingly vexatious. The provoking assurance with which they would enter a church, attack a minister, or challenge an argu- ment, is said to have been quite intolerable. Suppose, at the pres- ent day, a man like Rogers of a bold spirit, ready tongue, and loud voice, should rise up in a worshiping assembly, and tell the people they were entangled in the net of Antichrist, and sunk deep in the mire of idolatry ; then turning to the preacher, call him a hireling shepherd, making merchandise of his flock, and declaring that the rites he administered, viz., baptism by sprinkling-the baptism of infants-and the celebration of the sacrament at any time but at night-were antichristian fopperies ; accompanying all this with violent contortions, coarse expletives and foaming at the mouth : would it not require great forbearance on the part of the congrega- tion not to call a constable, and forcibly remove the offender? Yet the Rogerenes frequently used more aggressive language than this, and went to greater lengths in their testimony against the idol Sabbath. Their own narratives and controversial writings prove this ; nor do
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they offer any palliation of their course in this respect, but regard it as a duty they must perform, a cross they must bear.
Viewing the established order of the colony, only on the dark and frowning side, they considered it a righteous act to treat it with defi- ance and aggression. The demands of collectors, the brief of the constable, were ever molesting their habitations. It was now a cow, then a few sheep, the oxen at the plow, the standing corn, the stack of hay, the thrashed wheat, and anon, piece after piece of land, all taken from them to uphold a system which they denounced. Yet our sympathy with these sufferers is unavoidably lessened by the fact, that they courted persecution and gloried in it ; often informing against themselves, and compelling the violated law to bring down its arm upon them. Says John Bolles :
" God gave me such a cheerful spirit in this warfare, that when I had not the knowledge that the grand-juryman saw me at work on the first day, I would inform against myself before witness, till they gave out, and let me plow and cart and do whatsoever I have occasion to on this day."
What should a magistrate do? Often in despite of himself he was forced into severity. He had sworn to enforce the laws; he might shut his eyes and ears and refuse to know that such things were done, but here was a race who would not allow of such conniv- ance ; they obtruded their violations of the law upon his notice ; and he felt obliged to convict and condemn. The authorities were not in the first place inclined to rigor : they were not a persecuting people. New London county more than any other part of Connecticut, per- haps from its vicinity to Rhode Island, has ever been a stage whereon varied opinions might exhibit themselves freely, and a dif- ference of worship was early tolerated. Governor Saltonstall was perhaps more uniformly rigorous than any other magistrate in re- pressing the Rogerene disturbances. Nevertheless, while sitting as chief judge of the superior court, he used his utmost endeavors, by argument and conciliation, to persuade them to refrain from molesting the worship of their neighbors.
" He gave his word [says John Bolles] that to persuade us to forbear, if we would be quiet, and worship God in our own way according to our consciences, he would punish any of their people that should disturb us in our worship."
Here was an opportunity for a compact which might have led to a lasting peace. But the principles of the Rogerenes would not allow of compromise.
It is somewhat singular that in the midst of so much obloquy, John
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HISTORY OF NEW LONDON.
Rogers should have continued to take part in public affairs. He was never disfranchised ; when out of prison he was always ready with his vote ; was a warm partisan and frequently chosen to some inferior town office, such as sealer of leather, surveyor of highways, &c. Crimes, such as the code of the present day would define them, were seldom or never proved against the Rogerenes, but it must be allowed that coarseness, vulgarity, and impertinent obtrusiveness, come near to crimes, in the estimation of pure minds.
In the year 1700 Rogers having lived single, from the desertion of his wife twenty-five years, married himself to Mary Ransford. She is said to have been a maid-servant whom he had bought ; probably one of that class of persons called Redemptioners. The spirit and temper of this new wife may be inferred from the fact that she had already been arraigned before the court, for throwing scalding water out of the window upon the head of the constable who came to col- lect the minister's rate. As Rogers would not be married by any minister or magistrate of Connecticut, he was in a dilemma how to have the rite solemnized. His mode of proceeding is thus described by his son :
" They agreed to go into the County Court, and there declare their marriage ; and accordingly they did so; he leading his bride by the hand into court, where the judges were sitting, and a multitude of spectators present, and then desired the whole assembly to take notice, that he took that woman to be his wife ; his bride also assenting to what he said. Whereupon the judge (Weth- erell) offered to marry them in their form, which he refused, telling them that he had once been married by their authority and by their authority they had taken away his wife again, and rendered him no reason why they did it. Up- on which account he looked upon their form of marriage to be of no value, and therefore he would be married by their form no more. And from the court he went to the governor's house, (Fitz-John Winthrop's) with his bride and declared their marriage to the governor, who seemed to like it well enough, and wished them much joy, which is the usual compliment."
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