the cover of a joint-stool. When my great-great-grandfather read
it to his family, he turned up the joint-stool upon his knees,
turning over the leaves then under the tapes. One of the children
stood at the door to give notice if he saw the apparitor coming,
who was an officer of the spiritual court. In that case the stool
was turned down again upon its feet, when the Bible remained concealed
under it as before. This anecdote I had from my uncle Benjamin.
The family continued all of the Church of England till about the end
of Charles the Second's reign, when some of the ministers that had been
outed for nonconformity holding conventicles in Northamptonshire,
Benjamin and Josiah adhered to them, and so continued all their lives:
the rest of the family remained with the Episcopal Church.

Josiah, my father, married young, and carried his wife with three
children into New England, about 1682. The conventicles having
been forbidden by law, and frequently disturbed, induced some
considerable men of his acquaintance to remove to that country,
and he was prevailed with to accompany them thither, where they expected
to enjoy their mode of religion with freedom. By the same wife he
had four children more born there, and by a second wife ten more,
in all seventeen; of which I remember thirteen sitting at one time
at his table, who all grew up to be men and women, and married;
I was the youngest son, and the youngest child but two, and was born
in Boston, New England. My mother, the second wife, was Abiah Folger,
daughter of Peter Folger, one of the first settlers of New England,
of whom honorable mention is made by Cotton Mather in his church
history of that country, entitled Magnalia Christi Americana,
as 'a godly, learned Englishman," if I remember the words rightly.
I have heard that he wrote sundry small occasional pieces,
but only one of them was printed, which I saw now many years since.