The Rogerenes. John R. Bolles
first took ten sheep, and then complained that they were not sufficient to answer the fine and charges, whereupon, he came a second time and took a milch cow out of the pasture, and so we heard no more about it, by which I suppose the cow and the ten sheep satisfied the fine and charges.
As showing the absurd and unjust treatment that John Rogers endured at the hands of the civil and ecclesiastical power, we quote from Miss Caulkins. Clearly he was right with regard to the jurisdiction of the court:—
In 1711, he was fined and imprisoned for misdemeanor in court, contempt of its authority and vituperation of the judges. He himself states that his offense consisted in charging the court with injustice for trying a case of life and death without a jury. This was in the case of one John Jackson, for whom Rogers took up the battle axe. Instead of retracting his words, he defends them and reiterates the charge. Refusing to give bonds for his good behavior until the next term of court, he was imprisoned in New London jail. This was in the winter season and he thus describes his condition:—
“My son was wont in cold nights to come to the grates of the window to see how I did, and contrived privately to help me to some fire, etc. But he, coming in a very cold night, called to me, and perceiving that I was not in my right senses, was in a fright, and ran along the street, crying, ‘The authority hath killed my father’; upon which the town was raised, and forthwith the prison doors were opened and fire brought in, and hot stones wrapt in cloth and laid at my feet and about me, and the minister Adams sent me a bottle of spirits, and his wife a cordial, whose kindness I must acknowledge.
“But when those of you in authority saw that I recovered, you had up my son and fined him for making a riot in the night, and took, for the fine and charge, three of the best cows I had.”
John Bolles, born in 1677, a disciple of John Rogers, in his book entitled “True Liberty of Conscience is in Bondage to No Flesh,” makes this statement, on page 98:—
To my knowledge, was taken from a man, only for the costs of a justice’s court and court charge of whipping him for breach of the Sabbath (so-called) a mare worth a hundred pounds, and nothing returned, and this is known by us yet living, to have been the general practice in Connecticut.
His biographer adds, “Mr. Bolles was doubtless that man.”
We quote further from John Bolles:—
And as he (John Rogers) saith hitherto, so may we say now, fathers taken from their wives and children, without any regard to distance of place, or length of time. Sometimes fathers and mothers both taken and kept in prison, leaving their fatherless and motherless children to go mourning about the streets.
When a poor man hath had but one milch cow for his family’s comfort, it hath been taken away; or when he hath had only a small beast to kill for his family, it hath been taken from him, to answer a fine for going to a meeting of our own society, or to defray the charges of a cruel whipping for going to such a meeting, or things of this nature. Yea, £12 or £14 worth of estate hath been taken to defray the charges of one such whipping, without making any return as the law directs. And this latter clause in the law is seldom attended.
Yea, fourscore and odd sheep have been taken from a man, being all his flock; a team taken from the plough, with all its furniture, and led away. But I am not now about giving a particular account; for it would contain a book of a large volume to relate all that hath been taken from us, and as unreasonable and boundless as these.
Mr. McEwen says derisively:—
Their goods were distrained; their cattle were sold at the post, and some of their people were imprisoned. But, emulating the example of the apostles, they took joyfully the spoiling of their goods; yea, they gloried in bonds and imprisonment.
It was not the apostles, but the Hebrews, to whom the apostle wrote, who took joyfully the spoiling of their goods. A small matter, it may seem, to correct; but accuracy of Scripture quotation may be a Rogerene trait, and the writer will be proud if it be said, “Surely, thou art also one of them, for thy speech bewrayeth thee.”
The subject on which we have entered opens and broadens and deepens before us, blending with all history and all truth. It is not exceptional, it is not isolated. It may not be blotted from memory, as it cannot be blotted from existence, painfully interwoven as it is with the mottled fabric of time. The world’s greatest benefactors have often been its greatest sufferers. Socrates was made to drink the fatal hemlock, for not believing in the gods acknowledged by the state. Seneca, the moralist, was put to death by his ungrateful pupil, Nero. The first followers of Christ were persecuted, tortured and slain by the heathen world. Attaining to civil power, Christians treated in like manner their fellow Christians. Ecclesiastical history, wherever there has been an alliance of church and state, is blackened with crimes and cruelties too foul to be named. Recall the nameless horrors of the Inquisition, perpetrated under such rule. Think of Smithfield and the bloody queen.
Is it to be wondered at that the Rogerenes, meeting persecution at every turn, should have been aroused to a sublimity of courage, perhaps of defiance, against the tide of intolerance which had swept over the ages and was now wildly dashing its unspent waves across their path? Not until more than a century later did the potent word of Christian enlightenment go forth, “Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed.”
Passing a period of fifty years, darkened with wrongs and cruelties, the following notice of whipping is here given. It is necessary to present facts, that we may form a true judgment of the character and mission of this sect, which had at least the honor, like that of the early Christians, of being “everywhere spoken against.”
From the “Life of John Bolles” we take the following:—
I have before me a copy of the record of proceedings, in July, 1725, before Joseph Backus, Esq., a magistrate of Norwich, Conn., against Andrew Davis, John Bolles, and his son Joseph Bolles (a young man of twenty-four years), John Rogers (the younger), Sarah Culver and others, charged with Sabbath breaking, by which it appears that for going on Sunday, from Groton and New London, to attend Baptist worship in Lebanon, they were arrested on Sunday, imprisoned till the next day and then heavily fined, the sentence being that if fine and costs were not paid they should be flogged on the bare back for non-payment of fine, and then lie in jail till payment of costs. As none of them would pay, they were all flogged, the women as well as the men, John Bolles receiving fifteen stripes and each of the others ten.
According to the statement of one of the sufferers, Mary Mann of Lebanon wished to be immersed, and applied to John Rogers (the younger) and his society for baptism. Notice was publicly posted some weeks beforehand that on Monday, July 26th, 1725, she would be baptised and that a religious meeting would be held in Lebanon on Sunday, July 25th, “the day,” says Rogers, “on which we usually meet, as well as the rest of our neighbors.”[6] When the Sunday came, a company of Baptists, men and women, from Groton and New London, set out for Lebanon, by the county road that led through Norwich. The passage through Norwich was so timed as not to interfere with the hours of public worship. After they had passed through the village, they were pursued and stopped, brought back to Norwich, imprisoned until Monday, and then tried, convicted and sentenced for Sabbath breaking. It must be added that a woman who was thus stripped and flogged was pregnant at the time, and that the magistrate who ordered the whipping stood by and witnessed the execution of the sentence. This outrage was much talked of throughout New England, and led to the publication of divers proclamations and pamphlets.
Deputy Governor Jenks, of Rhode Island, the following January, having obtained a copy of the proceedings against Davis and the others, ordered it to be publicly posted in Providence, to show the people of Rhode Island “what may be expected from a Presbyterian government,” and appended to it an indignant official proclamation.
Governor Jenk’s Proclamation.
I order this to be set up in open view, in some public place, in the town of Providence, that the inhabitants may see and be sensible of what may be expected from a Presbyterian government, in case they should once get the rule over us. Their ministers