Family-histories and genealogies : containing a series of ...

CS^rfstuoltr
(early marriages being then usual), in that year ;
who
married :
first,
October 17, 1670, John Rogers of New London, Connecticut; secondly,
August 5, 1679, Peter Pratt; and, thirdly, soon after 1688, Matthew
29 Beckwith. She had two children by her first husband : i. Elizabeth,'^ born
30 November 8, 1671 ;
2. Johi,'^ born March 20, 1674; by her second hus-
31 band she had a son Peter /'^ and, by her third marriage, a daughter,
32 Griswold.^'^
In 1674 John Rogers, her first husband, departed from the established
orthodoxy of the New England churches, by embracing the doctrines of
the Seventh Day Baptists; and, having adopted, later, "certain pecuHar
notions of his own," though still essentially orthodox as respects the
fundamental faith of his time, became the founder of a new sect, called
after him Rogerenes, Rogerene Quakers, or Rogerene Baptists. Main-
taining "obedience to the civil government except in matters of conscience
and religion," he denounced, " as unscriptural, all interference of the civil
power in the worship of God."*^ It seemed proper to give here these
particulars with regard to Rogers's views, because they were made the
ground of a petition by his wife for a divorce, in May 1675, which was
granted by the General Court in October of the next year,"' and was fol-
lowed in 1677 by another, also granted, for the custody of her children,
her late husband "being so hettridox in his opinion and practice."*^ The
whole affair reminds us of other instances, more conspicuous in history,
of the narrowness manifested b}^ fathers of New England towards any
deviations from established belief ;
and
of their distrust of individual con-
science as a sufficient rule of religious life, without the interference of civil
authority. There is no reason to believe that the heterodoxy "in prac-
tice," referred to in the wife's last petition to the Court, was anything else
than a non-conformity akin to that for the sake of which the shores of
"' Caulkins's Hist, of New London, ut supra, pp. 203-09.
'^ Id., pp. 204-05.
" The Public Records of the Col. of Conn., 1665-1677, ut supra, p. 292.
" Id., p. 326.
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