her--and had, in the most flagrant manner, in a variety of ways,
violated the marriage contract--but especially by infidelity to her Bed;
For which reasons praying that a divorce from said Rogers, a vinculo
matrimonii, might be granted. The principal facts contained in said
petition being made to appear, upon a full hearing thereof. Therefore,

"Be it enacted by the Council and House of Representatives for said
State in General Assembly convened, That the Bonds of Matrimony between
the said Robert and Elizabeth be and hereby are dissolved."--[New
Hampshire State Papers, vol. 8, p. 776.]

I may, perhaps, here venture the irrelevant remark that "women sometimes
do strange things," and cite the subsequent conduct of Mrs. Rogers in
evidence of the declaration. After her divorce she married Captain John
Roach, master of an English vessel in the fur trade. The tradition is
that, having sailed from Quebec for London, he most unaccountably lost
his reckoning and found himself in Portsmouth (New Hampshire) harbor.
Here for reasons satisfactory to himself, he sold the cargo on his own
account and quit sea life.[A] After his marriage he lived with his wife
and her son by the former marriage on the estate in Concord, previously
mentioned as having been conveyed by Rogers to her father. Captain Roach
is said to have been most famous for his unholy expletives and his
excessive potations. The venerable Colonel William Kent, now living at
Concord in his nineties, says that Captain Roach one day brought into
the store where he was a clerk a friend who had offered to treat him and
called for spirit. Having drawn from a barrel the usual quantity of two
drinks the clerk set the measure containing it upon the counter,
expecting the contents to be poured into two tumblers, as was then the
custom. Without waiting for this division the thirsty Captain
immediately seized the gill cup and drained it. Then, gracefully
returning it to the board, he courteously remarked to his astonished
friend that when one gentleman asks another to take refreshment the
guest should be helped first, and should there be found lacking a
sufficiency for both, the host should call for more.

[Footnote A: Bouton's History of Concord, p. 351.]

Whether Mrs. Rogers gained by her exchange of husbands it would be hard
to say. That in 1812 she went willing from this to a land where "they
neither marry nor are given in marriage," it is easy to believe.[A]

[Footnote A: