Again, he says, “They entered the churches half naked.” He must have confounded the Boston Quakers with the Rogerenes, as nothing of the kind was ever known of the latter. It is true that Trumbull makes an assertion of this sort; but even Dr. Trumbull cannot be regarded by close students as an example of accuracy—certainly not as regards Rogerene history.
The inhabitants of New London plantation were not sinners above other men. At the time James Rogers, senior, his wife, sons and daughters were thrust into prison in New London, John Bunyan was held in jail in England and said he would stay there till the moss grew over his eyebrows, before he would deny his convictions or cease to promulgate them. In the light of to-day, neither of these committed any offense whatever. Hundreds of the best of men suffered in like manner in England, and for a long period of time; and some were given over to death. The reverend father of Archbishop Leighton was, for conscience’s sake, held imprisoned for more than twelve years, and not released until his faculties, both of body and mind, were seriously impaired. Rev. John Cotton, one of Boston’s earliest preachers, came out of prison to this country. Religious thought was drenched, so to speak, with false notions, and many, even of those who had escaped from persecution in the Old World, became persecutors in the New.
Great praise is due to such men as Roger Williams, who fled from Salem to the wilderness to escape banishment for his principles, hibernating among Indians “without bed or board,” as he expressed it, and whose ultimate settlement in Rhode Island made that State the field of religious liberty. Equal praise is due to John Rogers and his associates, at a later day, for boldly enunciating the same principles, and bravely suffering in their defense, ploughing the rough soil of Connecticut and sowing the good seed there.
Nor was the treatment of the Rogerenes comparable for cruelty with that of the Quakers at Boston, a few years prior to the Rogers movement. We hear nothing of the cutting off of ears, boring the tongue with a red-hot iron, banishment, selling into slavery or punishment by death, which disgraced the civilization of the Massachusetts colony and which was Puritanism with a vengeance, almost leading us to sympathize with their persecutors in England. New London plantation was disgraced by no such heathenism as this.
St. Paul boasted that he was a citizen of no mean city. We shall find that the Rogerenes are of no mean descent, sneered at and held in derision though they have been, by men of superficial thought.
James Rogers, senior, a prosperous and esteemed business man of Milford, Conn., had dealings in New London as early as 1656, and soon after became a resident. Says Miss Caulkins:—
He soon acquired property and influence and was much employed, both in civil and ecclesiastical affairs. He was six times representative to the General Court. Mr. Winthrop had encouraged his settlement in the plantation and had accommodated him with a portion of his own house lot next the mill, on which Rogers built a dwelling house of stone. He was a baker on a large scale, often furnishing biscuit for seamen and for colonial troops, and between 1660 and 1670 had a greater interest in the trade of the port than any other person in the place. His landed possessions were very extensive, consisting of several hundred acres on the Great Neck, the fine tract of land at Mohegan, called the Pamechaug Farm, several house lots in town and 2,400 acres east of the river, which he held in partnership with Col. Pyncheon of Springfield.[[2]] Perhaps no one of the early settlers of New London numbers at the present day so great a throng of descendants. His five sons are the progenitors of as many distinct lines. His daughters were women of great energy of character. John Rogers, the third son of James, having become conspicuous as the founder of a sect, which though small in point of number has been of considerable local notoriety, requires a more extended notice. No man in New London County was at one time more noted than he; no one suffered so heavily from the arm of the law, the tongue of rumor and the pens of contemporary writers.
John and James Rogers, Jr., in the course of trade, visited Newport, R.I., and there first embraced Sabbatarian principles and were baptized in 1674; Jonathan in 1675; James Rogers, senior, with his wife and daughter Bathsheba, in 1676, and these were received as members of the Seventh Day Church at Newport.[[3]]
As James Rogers, senior, against whom even the tongue of slander has been silent, was among the first to feel the ecclesiastical lash, a few words more concerning him from the pen of Miss Caulkins are here given:—
The elder James Rogers was an upright, circumspect man. His death occurred in February, 1688. The will is on file in the probate office in New London in the handwriting of his son John, from the preamble of which we quote.