Another vexation was the occasional arrival of false prophets in a
community where every man was expected to have a current supply of
religious experiences always ready for circulation. There was a certain
hypocritical Dick Swayn, for instance, a seafaring man, who gave much
trouble; and E.F.,--for they mostly appear by initials,--who, coming to
New Haven one Saturday evening, and being dressed in black, was taken
for a minister, and asked to preach: he was apparently a little insane,
and at first talked "demurely," but at last "railed like Rabshakeh,"
Cotton Mather says. There was also M.J., a Welsh tanner, who finally
stole his employer's leather breeches and set up for a preacher,--less
innocently apparelled than George Fox. But the worst of all was one
bearing the since sainted name of Samuel May. This vessel of wrath
appeared in 1699, indorsed as a man of a sweet gospel spirit,--though,
indeed, one of his indorsers had himself been "a scandalous fire-ship
among the churches." Mather declares that every one went a-Maying after
this man, whom he maintains to have been a barber previously, and who
knew no Latin, Greek, Hebrew, nor even English,--for (as he indignantly
asserts) "there were eighteen horrid false spells, and not one point, in
one very short note I received from him." This doubtful personage copied
his sermons from a volume by his namesake, Dr. Samuel Bolton,--"Sam the
Doctor and Sam the Dunce," Mather calls them. Finally, "this eminent
worthy stranger," Sam, who was no dunce, after all, quarrelled with his
parish for their slow payments, and "flew out like a Dragon, spitting
this among other fire at them:--'I see, no longer pipe, no longer
dance,'--so that they came to fear he was a cheat, and wish they had
never seen him." Then "the guilty fellow, having bubbled the silly
neighbors of an incredible number of pounds, on a sudden was gone," and
Cotton Mather sent a letter after him, which he declares to have been
the worst penalty the man suffered.