By these signs it may be judged that never was the influence of John Rogers more feared than at this very period, yet never also were the authorities more cautious regarding complaints and actions against him on avowedly ecclesiastical grounds.
Why seizures at this time are confined to this piece of land, can only be conjectured. At this date, the Mamacock land still lay under the attachment of the new executor, James, Jr., and so was safe from this sort of seizure. The attachment by James, Jr., was evidently a mere blind, and it served a double purpose.
We left John Rogers on his way back to prison, there to remain until the March term of the Superior Court, because he would not promise “good behavior” (“as if I had misbehaved myself.” Part I., Chapter V.).
Against tyranny in high places, there is ever at hand the one highest appeal, that to the public at large, where is always in reserve a good measure of sympathy and sense of justice. Not only is our hero stirred through and through by this personal and ecclesiastical thrust, under guise of righteous administration of law, on the part of an official who has for so many years occupied the position of a reverend preacher of the gospel of Jesus Christ; but he knows well of this last appeal, which has heretofore stood him in good stead against the bitter edicts of these half—if not wholly—ecclesiastical courts. Though as yet there are no newspapers, there are eyes to see, ears to hear, and tongues to carry fast and far.
What recks this Samson of their paltry “goal”? Somehow, without show of physical force (the least sign of which would surely have been entered on the court record), he makes the sheriff quail. The lightning in his eyes, perchance, the deep tones of a voice that never breathes an oath, even to swear by in a court; uttering ominous words to some such effect as that he “will seal his quarrel with his blood.” Should he attempt escape from the sheriff his death could be accomplished, then and there.
The sheriff returns to the court-room (meeting-house) and reports to the court that John Rogers is conducting himself in a “furious” manner, “threatening that the jail shall not hold him and that he will seal his quarrel with his blood”; the sheriff “fears he will break out of jail and do mischief to some of her Majesty’s subjects.” What subject but himself, through punishment which can be inflicted upon him for breaking away from an officer, which is a capital crime on the law book.