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Soon after Burton had left the camp the Doctor received a letter from Professor Muirson in which he said, "The only word on the rubbing you sent me from the last fragment of slab you found means 'Cave, and I think it should be placed before the words 'of Hydas'; thus you have a reference to the 'Cave of Hydas, in which there is, or was, something to be carefully guarded."
"To-morrow I hope to hear from Professor Muirson, and he will probably throw some light on the meaning of the inscription," said the Doctor.
Muirson, Colonel Heathcote began itinerating through southwestern Connecticut, ministers and magistrates frequently opposed and threatened them. The people occasionally welcomed them. They did not object to hear and to criticise the strangers, and were sometimes willing to have their good neighbors, if they chanced to be Church-of-England men, enjoy the ministrations of these passing visitors.
Colonel Heathcote wrote, "The Ministers are very uneasy at our coming amongst them, and abundance of pains were taken to persuade and terrify the people from hearing Mr. Muirson, but it availed nothing;" not even the threat to jail the rector for holding services contrary to the colony law which the magistrates had read to him at his lodgings. Church Doc. Conn., i, p. 20. Ibid., i, p. 42.
They would not be viewed with favor in Connecticut, where, by 1705, Episcopalians had become so numerous that a wealthy New Yorker, Colonel Heathcote by name, and a man thoroughly acquainted with his New England neighbor, undertook to look after the Church-of-England men as unfortunate brethren of a common faith. He asked that Rector Muirson be stationed at Rye, New York.
He was a man eminently fitted for the task, being filled with zeal for the conversion of dissenters. He finally chose the Rev. Mr. Muirson, and in 1706 began a series of proselytizing tours. Nevertheless, the clergyman was wroth at the treatment he received.
Muirson had organized the few churchmen at Stratford into a parish in 1707. Different clergymen had, from time to time, through the watchful care of Caleb Heathcote a name that we ought never to forget ministered to that little band in their sore trials and vexations.
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