In this year, John Rogers publishes, in pamphlet form, an account of the dispute agreed upon between himself and Mr. Saltonstall, telling the particulars of that great extortion. (Would that a copy of this might yet come to the light!)
1702.
In September, 1702, the County Court have a good opportunity to exercise the “after consideration” recommended by the Superior Court in 1700, which they improve by dealing with Mary, after the birth of her second child, exactly as they are accustomed to deal with an unmarried woman. Her presentment is in exactly the same wording, a part of which calls upon her to declare under oath, before the court, the name of the father of her child. To prevent their carrying out this form, John Rogers is there in court, with his six-months-old girl baby in his arms, to save it from this disgrace. He has given Mary directions how to proceed, in order to supplement his plan of breaking up the intended procedure. If she refuse to take the oath and to declare John Rogers to be the father of her child, the court will be baffled.[[95]]
Being ordered to take the oath, she is silent, as her husband has enjoined, while he declares to the court that this her child in his arms is his own. The court knows, as well as the man before them, that his first marriage has not been annulled for any legal cause; that he had reason to refuse a repetition of the ceremony. But while those who make and administer laws may be allowed to ignore them with impunity, lesser people must abide by them; least of all must this man escape, who has imperilled the ecclesiasticism of the land. They threaten Mary with stripes, if she continue[continue] her refusal to take the oath. She looks from the judge to the man who stands, so earnest and anxious, with the babe in his arms, bidding her not to take the oath, declaring that, if she obey him, he will shield her from harm. She knows he will do all that he can to protect her; but she has seen marks of the stripes upon his own back; she knows how he has sat for hours in the stocks, and been held for weary years in prison. Can he rescue her from the stripes?
He sees her yielding and pleads with her, pleads that she will save their child from this dishonor. The court sternly repeats the threat. Again he promises to defend her, in case she will obey him; but declares that, if she yield, branding his child as base-born, herself as common, and himself a villain, he needs must hesitate, hereafter, to own her as his wife.
She sees the court will not be trifled with. She knows that John Rogers uses no idle words. Yet will it not be safer to brave his displeasure than that of the court? She takes the oath, and declares John Rogers to be the father of her child. The cloud grows dark upon the father’s face. He folds his branded child against his heart and goes his way. All this he risked to hold his first love first, in seeming as in truth; has risked and lost.
The court proceeds as usual in cases of illegitimacy, pronouncing John Rogers the father of the child, and ordering that he pay 2s. 6d. per week towards its maintenance, until it is four years of age. Mary is allowed until the end of the following month to pay the usual fine of 40s., in case of non-payment of which she shall receive ten stripes on the naked body. In the meantime, she is to be detained in prison. Will John Rogers own his child to be illegitimate by paying this fine? By no means.
1703.
To now take Mary back (even if so allowed by the authorities)[[96]] would be to brand any other children in the same manner. To marry her by the prescribed form would be to acknowledge these two children to be illegitimate. Yet there is one thing that can be done, and must be done speedily. Mary must be rescued from the prison and thus saved from the lash. There are but two in all this region who will risk an attempt like that. They are John Rogers and his son. Mary escapes to Block Island.
After a safe period has elapsed, Mary is returned from Block Island to New London. Her children are placed with her, somewhere in the town, to give the more effect to her Petition to the General Court, which is presented early in May. It is a long and pathetic document (still to be seen in “Book of Crimes and Misdemeanors,” in the State Library, at Hartford), narrating the manner of her marriage to John Rogers; his taking her home and “ordering his servants to be conformable and obedient” to her; the trouble they had, “especially myself,” on account of the displeasure of John, Jr., at the marriage; a description of her presentment at court for her second child; her compliance with the court’s importunity, although her husband stood there “with it in his arms,” and how the result had made their children “base-born,” by which her “husband” says he is “grossly abused;” since “he took me in his heart and declared me so to be his wife before the world, and so owned by all the neighbors.” She beseeches that the sentence of the court be annulled; so that, “we may live together as husband and wife lawful and orderly,” “that the blessing of God be upon us, and your Honor, for making peace and reconciliation between us, may have an everlasting reward.” Dated in “New London, May 12, 1703.”