1677.
In the following February, James Rogers, Sr., and his wife Elizabeth, Capt. James and his wife, Joseph and his wife, John, Bathsheba and Jonathan, are each fined 15s. at the County Court for non-attendance at church.
At the next County Court, in June, besides non-attendance at church, John Rogers is charged with attending to his work on the first day of the week, in May last, and with having upon that day brought “a burthen of shoes into the town.” Upon this occasion, he owns to these facts in court, and further declares before that assembly that if his shop had stood under the window of Mr. Wetherell (magistrate) or next to the meeting-house, he would thus have worked upon the first day of the week. Capt. James and his brother Jonathan being arraigned at the same court for non-attendance at church and for work upon the first day of the week, assert that they have worked upon that day and will so work for the future. James Rogers, Sr., being examined upon a like charge, owns that he has not refrained from servile work upon the first day of the week “and in particular his plowing.” “He had,” says the record, “been taken of plowing the 6th day of May,” by which it appears that he has been imprisoned from that time until this June court, as has John also, since his apprehension with the load of shoes. To have secured bail they must have promised “good behavior”—viz. cessation of work on the first day—until this session of the court, which they could not do, being resolved upon this same regular course.
Mary, wife of Capt. James Rogers, herself a member of the Newport church, is presented at the same court for absenting herself for the last six months from public worship. Bathsheba Smith is presented for the same, and also for a “lying, scandalous paper against the church and one of its elders” set up “upon the meeting house.” This paper was evidently occasioned by the abovementioned imprisonment of her father and brother on account of their having substituted the Scriptural Sabbath for that instituted centuries later by ecclesiastical law.
The court “sees cause to bear witness against such pride, presumption and horrible profaneness in all the said persons, appearing to be practiced and resolved in the future,” and order that “a fine of £5 apiece be taken from each of them and that they remain in prison at their own charge until they put in sufficient bond or security to no more violate any of the laws respecting the due observance of the first day of the week,” or “shall forthwith upon their releasement depart and remain out of the colony.” Bathsheba is fined £5 for non-attendance at church and the “scandalous paper,” and Mary and Elizabeth 10s. each for non-attendance at church.
It is evident that a crisis has now arrived; the sacred Puritan Sabbath has been ignored in an amazingly bold manner by this little band of dissenters, who openly declare, in court, their intention of keeping a seventh day Sabbath, and that alone, whatever be the menace or the punishment.
In these early days, £5 is so large a sum as to be of the nature of an extreme penalty. Truly, the “discretion of the judges” is beginning to work. How James Rogers and his two sons escaped from prison at all, after this sentence, does not appear; certainly they did not give any bonds not to repeat their offenses nor any promise to remove from the colony. Proof of their release is in the fact that they are all again before the court at its very next meeting, in September, together with Elizabeth, Mary, Joseph and his wife, all for non-attendance at church; and upon this occasion, John declares that he neither does nor will attend the Congregational church, nor will he refrain from servile work on the first day of the week, upon which the court repeats the fine of £5 “for what is past” and recommends to the commissioners that the delinquent be called to account by a £5 fine “if not once a week yet once a month.” This, if strictly carried out, means almost constant imprisonment for John at his own charge, since it is against his principles to pay any such fines, or to give any of the required promises. Even could he be at large, £60 a year would seem to be more than he could earn by shoemaking. (At this period, £60 would buy a good farm “with mansion house thereon.”)
Besides the arraignment of the Rogers family at the June court, as previously described, a suit is brought by Matthew Griswold for damages to the amount of £300. A part of this sum is for the Mamacock farm, which John Rogers very naturally declined to deliver up to the marshal on demand of the divorced wife, which refusal is denominated by Mr. Griswold in this suit a “breach of covenant.” Another part is for the Griswold share of articles comprised in the marriage settlement of the fathers upon the couple. In this sum of £300 is also included a considerable charge for the maintenance of Elizabeth and her children at her father’s, during the time between her leaving her husband’s house and the date of the divorcement by the General Court; also board for her and her first child three months at her father’s house, during an illness following birth of said child (see Chapter XIV, “Dragon’s Teeth”).
Thus the divorced husband is asked to deliver up the farm he gave Elizabeth in full expectation of her remaining his wife, to repay all that her father gave them during the four years of their happy married life, to pay her board during a visit to her father’s house by solicitation of her parents,[[43]] and also to recompense her father for the maintenance of herself and children at the same place after she had deserted her husband and forcibly taken away his children.
It is to the credit of this County Court that, although incensed at the audacity of John Rogers in bringing a load of shoes into town on the first day of the week, together with his other “offenses,” it decides this case wholly in favor of the defendant.