In the spring of 1694, Rogers was transferred from the New London to the Hartford Prison. Why was this transfer made? Perhaps that the charges of blasphemy brought against him might with more certainty be sustained where he was not known. Perhaps that the sympathies of the people would not be as likely to find expression there as they sometimes did at his outrageous treatment in New London; as will be seen. Or, by a more rigorous treatment he might be made to submit. In Hartford he was placed in charge of a cruel and unprincipled jailer, who was entirely subservient to the will of his enemies, and who told John Rogers _he_ would make him comply with their worship, if the authorities could not. What prompted, we might ask, the unusual and merciless treatment that he received during this imprisonment at Hartford? He had not offended the authorities nor the people there; he was a stranger in their midst. The same remorseless spirit that had delivered him up to them as guilty of blasphemy was doubtless the moving, animating cause of such savage conduct. Scarcely four months had elapsed after his release from the Hartford prison where he had been confined nearly four years, before the Rev. Gurdon Saltonstall brought a suit of defamation against him, for the most trivial reasons, as we have seen (Chapter I), and upon no legal grounds whatever; yet a parasitical jury awarded the august complainant damages in the unconscionable sum of £600. Of this proceeding, Miss Caulkins, in her “History of New London,” says: “Rogers had not been long released from prison, before he threw himself into the very jaws of the lion, as it were, by provoking a personal collision with Mr. Saltonstall, the minister of the town.” “Jaws of the lion!” Perhaps Miss Caulkins builded wiser than she knew. We had not ourselves presumed to characterize Mr. Saltonstall as the king of beasts; but, since John Rogers, so far as we know, was never charged with deviation from the truth, except in the above mentioned suit, while the Rev. Mr. Saltonstall was not above suspicion, as will appear by the false charge of blasphemy he brought against Rogers, and by other acts of which we shall speak hereafter, we will leave the reader to judge on which side the truth lay in this case.