Litchfield enquirer., 1849-06-14
JOWN ROGERS
And kis "niue Children SOith one at ht
 BTeGst."

A writer in the Cambridge Mass.) Chronicle, thus puts at rest the vexed question-how many children had John Rogers ?-which has puzzled all readers of the OM New-England Primer;
 How often have children been pug zled by the ambiguity of the expression, "nine small children and one at the breast" not knowing whether the last named was intended to be included in, or added to the number first mentioned. Sometimes they tried to solve the diff culty by counting the heads of the chll- dren in the picture; but the artist, mod estly declining to meddle with matters beyond his business, used, in the old Primers, to leave the matter as much in the dark as he found it. A glorious in- distinctness in the picture renders 1t ut- terly impossible to distinguish the chil- dren of the Martyr from the common crowd; and thus, in obscurity the matter remained for nearly two centuries. In the recent edition "with an historical introduction by H. Humphrey, D. D., President of Amherst Coliege."-andin the one of which over one hundred thou- sand copies have lately been circulated by the Massachusetts Sabbath School Society, the publishers have attempted to settle the matter by giving us dis- tinct picture, in which the spectators are left out, and the wife and nine small children besides the one at the breast are plainly represented.
 The earliest published history of the martyrdom is "Foxe's Acts and Monu- 1 ments of these latter and perilous Dayes," printed in London, A. D. 1862, only seven years after the death of Rogers and whilst his numerous family were liv- ing. It contains the following state ment:
 "His wife and children, being KY in number, x able to go out and one suck ing on her breast, met him on the way as he went towards Smithfeld." A person inclined to skepticism as to the accuracy of the proposed correction, may perceive slight degree of ambigu ity in the language of Foxe; therefore I
 produce another evidence. In Middle toms Evangelical Biography, Vol. page
 so2, we read,-"His aye and ten chiI-
 dren Jy her side wiM one at her breast
 met Aina by the soay." As the matter is
 one which has become hallowed in the
 minds of many by early associations, they
 may be unwilling to change their long
 cherished views without still further tes-
 timony of the correctness of the altera' / tions. For their benefit will give one
 extract from a recent publication the re-
 suit of great researah and work of the
 highest authority on historical and other , matters pertaining to the period of whicf 7 it treats" The Annals of the English n Bible by Christopher Anderson, Lon \ don, lS45." On the 2s6th page of the n second volume may be found this pas ', sage:
 J "Tl,o 1,nnrln ,rn~<- es;";"S thanks fol F. his constancy, but there among the ,. crowd, there met him the wife, whom
 neither Gardiner nor Bonner would per. , init him to see. His wife, the foreigner with all her children. * * the
 eldest now nearly seventeen years of age the youngest, or the elepcnth child, u,1 f unconscious babe moaO haaging at Me mother's breast"
 Thus it has been shown from the highest English authority-the earliest
 and the latest-that the true number of
 Mrs. Rogers children was nine, nor ten,
 bat eleoen. The error may at first have
 been merely typographical arising from
 the transposition of the numerical letters
 Al, as originally printed in Foxe Later
 historians, copying at second hand, have