The chief care of the legislators, in this body of penal laws, was the maintenance of orderly conduct and good morals in the community: they constantly invaded the domain of conscience, and there was scarcely a sin which was not subject to magisterial censure. The reader is aware of the rigor with which these laws punished rape and adultery; intercourse between unmarried persons was likewise severely repressed. The judge was empowered to inflict a pecuniary penalty, a whipping, or marriage *s on the misdemeanants; and if the records of the old courts of New Haven may be believed, prosecutions of this kind were not unfrequent. We find a sentence bearing date the first of May, 1660, inflicting a fine and reprimand on a young woman who was accused of using improper language, and of allowing herself to be kissed. *t The Code of 1650 abounds in preventive measures. It punishes idleness and drunkenness with severity. *u Innkeepers are forbidden to furnish more than a certain quantity of liquor to each consumer; and simple lying, whenever it may be injurious, *v is checked by a fine or a flogging. In other places, the legislator, entirely forgetting the great principles of religious toleration which he had himself upheld in Europe, renders attendance on divine service compulsory, *w and goes so far as to visit with severe punishment, ** and even with death, the Christians who chose to worship God according to a ritual differing from his own. *x Sometimes indeed the zeal of his enactments induces him to descend to the most frivolous particulars: thus a law is to be found in the same Code which prohibits the use of tobacco. *y It must not be forgotten that these fantastical and vexatious laws were not imposed by authority, but that they were freely voted by all the persons interested, and that the manners of the community were even more austere and more puritanical than the laws. In 1649 a solemn association was formed in Boston to check the worldly luxury of long hair. *z
s
[ Code of 1650, p. 48. It seems sometimes to have happened that the judges superadded these punishments to each other, as is seen in a sentence pronounced in 1643 (p. 114, “New Haven Antiquities”), by which Margaret Bedford, convicted of loose conduct, was condemned to be whipped, and afterwards to marry Nicholas Jemmings, her accomplice.]
t
[ “New Haven Antiquities,” p. 104. See also “Hutchinson’s History,” for several causes equally extraordinary.]
u
[ Code of 1650, pp. 50, 57.]
v
[ Ibid., p. 64.]
w
[ Ibid., p. 44.]
*
[ This was not peculiar to Connecticut. See, for instance, the law which, on September 13, 1644, banished the Anabaptists from the State of Massachusetts. (“Historical Collection of State Papers,” vol. i. p. 538.) See also the law against the Quakers, passed on October 14, 1656: “Whereas,” says the preamble, “an accursed race of heretics called Quakers has sprung up,” etc. The clauses of the statute inflict a heavy fine on all captains of ships who should import Quakers into the country. The Quakers who may be found there shall be whipped and imprisoned with hard labor. Those members of the sect who should defend their opinions shall be first fined, then imprisoned, and finally driven out of the province.—“Historical Collection of State Papers,” vol. i. p. 630.]
x
[ By the penal law of Massachusetts, any Catholic priest who should set foot in the colony after having been once driven out of it was liable to capital punishment.]
y
[ Code of 1650, p. 96.]
z
[ “New England’s Memorial,” p. 316. See Appendix, E.]