His mismanagement and plottings having grown insufferable he was arrested and conveyed in irons to Montreal in September, 1768, to be there tried by court-martial for high treason.[28] On some ground, probably a technical one, he escaped conviction, and at some date between May, 1769, and February, 1770, he sailed for England.
And there, strange as it may seem, the stalwart, cheeky, fine-looking, wily ex-Commandant was lionized. His acquittal had vindicated his innocence and established his claim to martyrdom. His books had advertised him as a hero. His creditors, to whom he owed considerable amounts, supported his claims in hopes thereby of getting their dues. He was gazed at by the commonalty. He was feted by the nobility. He was received by the king and allowed to kiss his hand. He claimed payment for arrears of salary and other expenses previously disallowed in England and at home, which was made. Encouraged by his successes he pushed boldly on and asked to be made an English Baronet, with £600 a year, and in addition to that, a Major in the army.[29] One is in doubt which to wonder at the most, the audacity of the bold adventurer, or the stupidity of the British public. But vaulting ambition had at length overleaped itself. He failed of the coveted knighthood, and sank by degrees to his true level.
We see nothing more of Major Rogers until July, 1775, when he again appears in America as a Major of the British Army retired on half pay. The object of his visit to his native land just at the beginning of our Revolutionary war was not satisfactorily apparent. Some considered him a military adventurer, anxious to sell his services to the highest bidder. Others regarded him as a British spy. He wandered over the country all the way from Pennsylvania to New Hampshire with very little ostensible business. His improbable statements, his associations with persons hostile to the American cause, his visits to places of bad reputation, as well as his whole general conduct, rendered him a suspected person.
He was arrested on the twenty-second of September following his arrival by the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety, but was afterwards paroled upon his solemn declaration and promise that "on the honor of a soldier and a gentleman he would not bear arms against the American United Colonies, in any manner whatever, during the present contest between them and Great-Britain;"[30] yet, on the twenty-sixth of the next November, he makes a tender of his services to the British government, in a letter addressed to General Gage, and was encouraged to communicate more definitely his proposals.[31]
On the second day of December, a little more than a month later, in shabby garb he calls upon President Wheelock, at Hanover, New Hampshire. After speaking of his absence in Europe, during which, he said, he had fought two battles in Algiers, under the Dey, he officiously tendered his aid in a proposed effort to obtain a grant of land for Dartmouth College. The President distrusted him, but treated him civilly. At the close of the interview he returned to the tavern where he passed the night, and left the next morning without paying his reckoning.[32]
Again, on the nineteenth of the same month, at Medford, Massachusetts, he addresses a letter to General Washington, soliciting an interview, but his reputation was such that the Commander-in-Chief declined to see him.[33]
Even this did not discourage him. With an effrontery truly wonderful, on the twenty-fifth of June, 1776, after he had been arrested in South Amboy and brought to New York, he expressed to the Commander-in-Chief his desire to pass on to Philadelphia, that he might there make a secret tender of his services to the American Congress.[34]
However, by this time, his duplicity had become so manifest that a few days after this interview (July 2, 1776) the New Hampshire House of Representatives passed a formal vote recommending his arrest,[35] which was supplemented two years later (November 19, 1778) by a decree of proscription.
Finding hypocrisy no longer available, sometime in August, 1776, he accepted a commission of Lieutenant Colonel Commandant, signed by General Howe and empowering him to raise a battalion of Rangers for the British Army. To this work he now applied himself and with success.[36]
On the twenty-first of October, 1776, Rogers fought his last battle, so far as I have been able to discover, on American soil. His Regiment was attacked at Mamaronec, New York, and routed by a body of American troops. Contemporary accounts state that he did not display his usual valor in this action and personally withdrew before it was over.