If churches suffered from the severe ecclesiastical laws of 1742-43, individuals did also. Under the law which considered traveling ministers as vagrants, and which the Assembly had made still more stringent by the additional penalty "to pay down the cost of transportation," so learned a man as the Rev. Samuel Finley, afterwards president of Princeton, was imprisoned and driven from the colony because he insisted upon preaching in Connecticut. Indeed, it was his persistence in returning to the colony that caused the magistrates to increase the severity of the law.[124] When the ministers John Owen of Groton and Benjamin Pomeroy of Hebron, as well as the itinerant James Davenport of Southold, criticised the laws, all of them were at once arraigned for the offense before the Assembly. There was so much excitement over the arrest of Pomeroy and Davenport that it threatened a riot. All three men were discharged, but Davenport was ordered out of the colony for his itinerant preaching and for teaching resistance to the civil laws. Pomeroy, his friend, had declared that the laws forbade any faithful minister, or any one faithful in civil authority, to hold office. Events bore out his statement, for ministers were hounded, and the New Light justices of the peace, and other magistrates, were deprived of office. Pomeroy, himself, was discharged only to be complained of for irregular preaching at Colchester and in punishment to be,deprived of his salary for seven years.[125] The Rev. Nathan Stone of Stonington was disciplined for his New Light sympathies. Philemon Bobbins of Branford was deposed for preaching to the Baptists at Wallingford. This last procedure was the work of the Consociation of New Haven county, which thereby began a six years' contest, 1741-47, with the Branford church. In 1745 this church attempted to throw off the yoke of the Consociation by renouncing the Saybrook Platform. During these years of persecution, the opposition to the Old Light policy was gradually gaining effective power, although the college had expelled Brainerd, and Mr. Cook, one of the Yale corporation, had found it expedient to resign because of his too prominent part in the formation of the North Church of New Haven. The Old Lights in the legislature of 1743 passed the repeal of the Toleration Act because the New Lights had no commanding vote; but they were increasing throughout the colony. Fairfield East Consociation had licensed Brainerd the year that Yale expelled him. Twelve ministers of New London and Windham county had met to approve the revival, notwithstanding the repeal of the Toleration Act and the known antagonism of the Windham Association to the Separatists. Windham Consociation and that of Fairfield East favored the revival. Large numbers of converts were made in these districts, and many also in Hartford county. In the New Haven district the spirit of antagonism and of persecution was strongest.