Ezekiel Rogers

Ezekiel Rogers (born about 1590 in Wethersfield , Essex , England ; died 23 January 1660 in Rowley , Massachusetts , New England) was an English puritan and pioneer of settlers in New England .

Life

England

He was the second son of Richard Rogers , one of the leading Puritan preachers and theologians of his day, from his first marriage to Mary Duckfield. Ezekiel's older brother was Daniel Rogers , who later also entered the priesthood and would become one of the most influential Puritan clergymen during the English interregnum . After studying at Christ's College of Cambridge University (BA 1605, MA 1608), he was in 1610 chaplain of Sir Francis Barrington, 1st Baronet of Barrington Hall at Hatfield Broad Oak , Essex.

In his will, Rogers wrote that recovery from a serious illness around the age of twenty only strengthened his belief in God to such an extent that he decided to take up the priesthood. As a result, he became an advocate of Puritan beliefs; from the increasing reprisals against all too radical reformers he was initially spared in his position as private pastor of the Barrington Baronets. Only after Barrington, with the help of his connections to the Puritan gentry in Yorkshire, obtained the benefice of the northern English parish Rowley in 1621 and Rogers made a name for himself there with his sermons, did he come into conflict with the state church. Although Rogers initially enjoyed the benevolence of the Archbishop of York, Tobie Mathew , and was able to establish a regular meeting of the Puritan clergy of the East Riding of Yorkshire in his parish in Rowley , after William Laud after 1633 as Archbishop of Canterbury a strictly anti- Puritan one Church control pretended, the situation for Rogers became precarious. In 1634 he refused to read the Book of Sports and was removed from office in 1636. In addition, his financial situation worsened as Thomas Barrington, Sir Francis Barrington's eldest son and patron of the Rowley Ward, refused to reimburse Rogers for the cost of repairing the parish. Like thousands of Puritans of the 1630s, Rogers finally decided to join the Great Migration , that is, to emigrate to New England . He was followed by a good 20 families from Rowley and the surrounding area.

New England

In 1638 he reached America and, after a short stay in New Haven, decided the following summer to establish a new settlement with his followers on the banks of the Merrimack River north of Boston . The settlers bought land from the towns of Ipswich and Newbury for £ 800 and established the new settlement in the spring of 1639, named Rowley after the town where the settlers came from. By this time, Rogers had completely broken with Church of England doctrine and had come to believe that it was the parish's privilege to designate its pastor, thus becoming an avowed congregationalist . So the congregation Rowley was born on July 4, 1639 by the voluntary covenant ( church covenant ) brought the settlers to life; Rogers was to preside over her as pastor until his death.

In the years that followed, Rowley was one of the most influential preachers for the Massachusetts Bay Colony . He also exercised his influence in political matters. For example, on the occasion of the annual election of the governor of the colony in 1643, he gave a sermon in which he expressed the view that no man should hold the governorship for more than one term in order to prevent it from developing into a life office. Despite Roger's admonitions, John Winthrop was again elected to the governorship.

Roger's late years were marked by personal and health hardships. His first wife, Joan Hartopp, whom he had married in England in 1627, died in May 1649. Rogers then married the much younger Joan Nelson, a daughter of the Massachusetts preacher John Wilson, but she and her newborn also died in February 1650 in childbed. Thereupon he married the widow Mary Baker on July 16, 1651, who outlived him by a few years, but on the wedding night it was probably because of the arson of a spurned rival, Roger's house, along with the library and church records, burned down. Only a few weeks after the wedding, Rogers was thrown from his horse and suffered permanent paralysis of his right arm, so that he had to learn to write with his left hand. His weak constitution plagued him until his death. Rogers died on January 23, 1663 and was buried in Rowley's cemetery.

Cotton Mather underscored Roger's importance for New England church history by devoting a chapter to him in his Magnalia Christi Americana . In Mather's words he was like his namesake Ezekiel “no minor prophet” and “inspired by a divine spirit” ( And it is not among the smaller Prophets of New England that we have also seen an Ezekiel; one inspired with a divine fortitude for the work of a witness prophesying in the sackcloth of a wilderness ). The only work Rogers published during his lifetime was the twelve-page catechism The Chief Grounds of Christian Religion Set Down by Way of Catechizing Gathered longe since for the use of an Honorable Family (London 1648). Of interest to historians are Rogers' diaries, first printed in 1930, and his extensive correspondence with both English and New England Puritans.

literature

• MM Kappen (Ed.): Two Elizabethan Puritan Diaries, by Richard Rogers and Samuel Ward. The American Society of Church History, Chicago 1933 ( digitized from the HathiTrust Library pages ).