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Xerox University Microfilms 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 WELLS, Michael Vernon, 1947- SEX AND THE LAW IN COLONIAL NEW ENGLAND. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1974 History, general Xerox University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48io6 © Copyright by Michael Vernon Wells 1974 THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED. SEX AND THE LAW IN COLONIAL NEW ENGLAND DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Michael Vernon Wells, B.A., M.A. The Ohio State University 1974 Reading Committee: Approved By Bradley Chapin Paul Bowers Clayton Roberts I Ad^ser 7 \ Department) of Hi§jory Acknowledgments I wish to thank Professor Bradley Chapin of the Department of History for his kind assistance, support, and guidance not only concerning this dissertation but also throughout my career as a graduate student. He has been more than an advisor; he has also been a friend. I would also like to thank Professors Paul Bowers and Clayton Roberts. They read the manuscript and offered valued criticism. This work is of course dedicated to my wife, Catherine. She deserves much more, but this small piece of scholarship is all that I can publically give to her. VITÜ üpril 1 6, 1947 .... Born— Dayton, Ohio 1 9 6 9................ B.û, cum laude, Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio 1969-1971 .......... University Fellow and Teaching Associate, Department of History, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1971 ........ M.A., The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1971-1974 .......... Teaching Associate and Dissertation Year Fellow, Department of History, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field; American History Studies in American Colonial History. Professor Bradley Chapin Studies in Jeffersonian and Jacksonian History. Professor Paul Bowers Studies in Tudor-Stuart History, Professor Clayton Roberts Stud.ies in Ancient Roman History. Professor Cyrus St. Clair Table of Contents Page Acknowledgments ......... t ................ ii V i t a ............................................. ill Introduction........... 1 Chapter I. The English Background .................... 7 II. The Puritan Background: Marriage, Divorce; Sex; Courtship................... 21 III. The Influence of Religion, the Church, and the Bible ................. 52 IV. Puritans and the Secular Causes of I mmorality ...................... 90 V. Crimes of Adultery and Pre-Marital Sex . 104 VI. Rape and Child Molestations ........ 136 VII. Crimes of Sodomy, Buggery, and Incest . l6l VIII. Prostitution— Public Decency— Slanderous Statements ...... .............. l84 Bibliography ..................................... 199 Introduction When Nathaniel Hawthorne penned The Scarlet Letter in the early nineteenth-century, he mirrored what has become a long American fascination with the moral code and moral lapses of this country's Puritan forefathers, Hawthorne's view presents the Puritans as stern and forbidding moralists who were able to induce such feelings of guilt in a wayward minister that a red "A" mysteriously appeared on his breast similar to the "A" authorities sewed on the garments of the married woman who was his lover. The facts Hawthorne presented in his novel reflect the actual conditions of crime and punishment in early New England, and even if the colonists were never able to hound a man as they did in The Scarlet Letter, their moral code and ideas on sex outside the institution of marriage, whether distorted by subsequent generations or not, have influenced at least the domestic side of American history, Hawthorne himself wrote The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables in attempts to exorcise the Puritan devils from his New England soul. There is no doubt that the Puritans took a harder line than their English brethren when it came to the breakdown of what was considered the proper moral order. One of the 1 reasons for the Puritan immigration into New England was the belief that England was a modern Sodom and Gomorrah upon which God would vent his wrath. The collapse of English political stability, the attempts of the Stuart dynasty to maintain a position from which kings could really rule, and the actions and practices of the Anglican Church seemed to the Puritans proof of the great calamity which was sure to rock England, Yet, in the New World, the Puritans were technically if not operationally still under English law and had to tread carefully lest their legislation so clash with that of the mother country as to bring about a revocation of their colonial charter. For this reason, the Massachusetts Bay coloniest attempted to use discretionary justice for a number of years. The Puritans were also troubled by Biblical dictates concerning moral issues and the punishments for moral lapses. They tried hard to follow Biblical examples in building their New Jerusalem, but sometimes they found the Bible too severe and other times too lenient in dealing with moral transgressions. This type of problem usually called for a consultation of elders in an attempt to discover the divine will. It was troublesome when the Bible would not fit the realities of a sex crime in colonial New England. Sex in History Until recently historians have seldom closely exsunined the subject of sex, and those who have written about the 3 subject have been American colonial historians. Here, the limited population and the availability of good records have been important factors.^ Presumably, colonial historians have prurient interests neither more nor less developed than other academics, and sex has appeared and been studied in an incidental fashion in other periods of American history. As John Burnham points out, "Morton's Maypole at Merrymount, miscegenation, the Eaton affair, Maria Monk, the Mormons, Lincoln's jokes, bachelor Cleveland's dependent child, and much more.", have been topics for historical discussion.^ Still, the topic has been usually hidden or referred to in a narrow way. Mostly it was "intertwined" with other historical studies.^ As Burnham analyzes the situation: . although American history has been kept relatively chaste, many of its practitioners have discussed sex incidentally. What is lacking is systematic work to parallel existing research on the family, Ditzion's work on attitudes, and such surveys as Nelson M. Blake's book on divorce in the United States. Americans have, for example, not even the stodgiest general history of prostitution in the United States, although a number of works written years ago cover that phenomenon in Europe, Indeed, by neglecting such areas historians have permitted, perhaps compelled, other kinds of scholars to write history.^ Burnham raises some interesting points concerning the role of sex in biography, the history of various institutions, and in general histories of American life.^ One may wonder, for example, what could be demonstrated if Daniel Boorstin chose to highlight sex in some form in his 4 general histories of America rather than lawyers, ice merchants, or department store magnates. However, Burnham asks for types of analysis which historians are probably not yet prepared to undertake. His suggestions and even rhetoric sound similar to those issued Ij Robert Beckhoffer in his book on history and social analysis « Historians need not be interested in sex— whatever it is— because it is arresting, fun, and absorbing in and of itself. They need to be interested in it only because it is important, and they need to say why it is important. To this end they ought to be introducing

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