As showing some of the phases of a common humanity, the reading of the trial is interesting.  Mr. Cheever, who was then thirty-five years old, was desired to answer these charges of unseemly gestures, which his accusers had brought down to a rather small point, such as holding down his head into the seat, “then laughing or smiling,” and also “wrapping his handkerchief about his face, and then pulling it off again;” and still another, “that his carriage was offensively uncomely,” three affirming “that he rather carried it as one acting a play, than as one in the presence of God in an ordinance.”

In his answer to these, Mr. Cheever explained his actions as arising from violent headaches, which, coming upon him usually “on the Lord’s day in the evening, and after church meeting,” were mitigated by winding his handkerchief around his head ‘as a fillet.’  As to his smiling or laughing, “he knew not whether there was any more than a natural, ordinary cheerfulness of countenance seeming to smile, which whether it be sinful or avoidable by him, he knew not;” but he wished to humble himself for the “least appearance of evil, and occasion of offence, and to watch against it.”  As to his working with the church, he said:  “I must act with the church, and (which is uncomfortable) I must either act with their light, or may expect to suffer, as I have done, and do at this day, for conscience’ sake; but I had rather suffer anything from men than make a shipwreck of a good conscience or go against my present light, though erroneous, when discovered.”

He then went on to say that, while he did not wholly free himself from blame as to his carriage, and as to his “want of wisdom and coolness in ordering and uttering his speeches,” yet he could not be convinced as yet that he had been guilty of “Miriam’s sin,” or deserved the censure which the church had inflicted upon him; and he could not look upon it “as dispensed according to the rules of Christ.”  Then he closed his address with the following words, which will give some idea of his Christian spirit:  “Yet I wait upon God for the discovery of truth in His own time, either to myself or church, that what is amiss may be repented of and reformed; that His blessing and presence may be among them and upon His holy ordinances rightly dispensed, to His glory and their present and everlasting comfort, which I heartily pray for, and am so bound, having received much good and comfort in that fellowship, though I am now deprived of it.”

At about this time of his trial with the church he was afflicted by the death of his wife.  Three more children had been born to them—­Elizabeth, Sarah, and Hannah.  Soon after this, in 1650,—­and, it has been said, on account of his troubles,—­he removed to Ipswich, Massachusetts, to become master of the grammar school there.  His services as teacher in New Haven must have been valued, if one can judge by the amount of salary received, for, in the case of the teacher who followed him, the people were not willing “to pay as large a salary as they had done to Mr. Cheever,” and so they gave him ten pounds a year.