Such a custom as “bundling,” therefore, bears on its face the fact that it is an inheritance from a simple and comparatively primitive period. If, then, in the case of New England, it was not derived from the mother country, it becomes a curious question whence and how it was derived.
But no matter whence or how derived, it is obvious that the prevalence of such a custom would open a ready and natural way for a vast increase of sexual immorality at any time when surrounding conditions predisposed a community in that direction. This is exactly what I cannot help surmising occurred in New England at the time of “the Great Awakening” of the last century, and immediately subsequent thereto. The movement was there, and in obedience to the universal law it made its way on the lines of least resistance. Hence the entries of public confession in the church records, and the tide of immorality in presence of which the clergy stood aghast.
But in order to substantiate this theory of an historical manifestation it remains to consider how generally the custom of “bundling” prevailed in New England, and to how late a day it continued. The accredited historians of New England, so far as I am acquainted with their writings, throw little light on this question. Mr. Elliott, for instance, in his chapter on the manners and customs of the New England people, contents himself with some pleasing generalities like the following, the correctness of which he would have found difficulty in maintaining:—
“With this exalted, even exaggerated, value of the individual entertained in New England, it was not possible that men or women entertaining it should yield themselves to corrupt or debasing practices. Chastity was, therefore, a cardinal virtue, and the abuse of it a crying sin, to be punished by law, and by the severe reproof of all good citizens.”[20]
According to this authority, therefore, as “bundling” was unquestionably both a “corrupt” and a “debasing practice,” “it was not possible that men or women” of New England “should yield themselves” to it; and that ends the matter.
Passing on from Mr. Elliott to another authority: in his recently published and very valuable “Economic and Social History of New England,” Mr. Weeden has two references to “bundling.” In one of them (p. 739) he speaks of it as “certainly an unpuritan custom” which was “extensively practised in Connecticut and Western Massachusetts,” against which “Jonathan Edwards raised his powerful voice”; and again he later on (p. 864) alludes to it as “a curious custom which accorded little with the New England character,” and which “lingered among the lower orders of people ... prevailing in Western Massachusetts as late as 1777.” I am led to believe that the custom prevailed far more generally and to a much later date than these statements of Mr. Weeden would seem to indicate; that, indeed, it was continued even in eastern Massachusetts and the towns immediately about Boston until after the close of the Revolutionary troubles, and probably until the beginning of the present century. The Braintree church records throw no light on this portion of the subject; but the Groton church records show that not until 1803 was the practice discontinued of compelling a public confession before the whole congregation whenever a child was born in less than seven months after marriage. Turning then to Worthington’s “History of Dedham” (p. 109),—a town only ten miles from Boston,—I find that the Rev. Mr. Haven, the pastor of the church there, alarmed at the number of cases of unlawful cohabitation, preached at least as late as 1781 “a long and memorable discourse,” in which, with a courage deserving of unstinted praise, he dealt with “the growing sin” publicly from his pulpit, attributing “the frequent recurrence of the fault to the custom then prevalent of females admitting young men to their beds who sought their company with intentions of marriage.” Again, in a letter of Mrs. John Adams, written in 1784, in which she gives a very graphic and lively account of a voyage across the Atlantic in a sailing-vessel of that period, I find the following, in which Mrs. Adams, describing how the passengers all lived in the common cabin, adds:—“Necessity has no law; but what should I have thought on shore to have laid myself down in common with half a dozen gentlemen? We have curtains, it is true, and we only in part undress,—about as much as the Yankee bundlers.”[21] Mrs. Adams was then writing to her elder sister, Mrs. Cranch; they were both women of exceptional refinement,—granddaughters of Col. John Quincy, and daughters of the pastor of the Weymouth church. Mrs. Adams while writing her letter knew that it would be eagerly looked for at home, and that it would be read aloud and passed from hand to hand through all her acquaintance, and this was in fact the case; so it is evident, from this easy, passing allusion, that the custom of “bundling” was then so common in the community in which Mrs. Adams lived, that not only was written reference to it freely made, but the reference conveyed to a large circle of friends a perfect idea of what she meant to describe. At the same time the use of the phrase “the Yankee bundlers” indicates the social class to which the custom was confined.
The general prevalence of the practice of “bundling” throughout New England, and especially in southeastern Massachusetts, up to the close of the last century may therefore, I think, be assumed. I have already said that the origin of the custom was due to sparseness of settlement, the primitive and frugal habits of the people permitting the practice, and the absence of good means of communication. It becomes, therefore, a somewhat curious subject of inquiry whether traces of “bundling” can be found in the traditions and records of any of our large towns. That it existed and was commonly practised within a ten-mile radius of Boston I have shown; but I greatly doubt whether it ever obtained in Boston itself. Nevertheless, an examination of the church records of Boston, Salem, and more especially of Plymouth, would be interesting, with a view to ascertaining whether the spirit of sexual incontinence prevailed during the last century in the large towns of New England to the same extent to which it unquestionably prevailed in the rural districts. My own belief is that it did so prevail, though the practice of “bundling” was not in use; if I am correct in this surmise, it would follow that the evil was a general one, and that “bundling” was merely the custom through which it found vent. In such case the cause of the evil would have to be looked for in some other direction. It would then, paradoxical as such a statement may at first appear, probably be found in the superior general morality of the community and the strict oversight of a public opinion which, except in Boston,—a large commercial place, where there was always a considerable floating population of sailors and others,—prevented the recognized existence of any class of professional prostitutes. On the one hand, a certain form of incontinence was not associated either in the male or female mind with the presence of a degraded class, while, on the other hand, the natural appetites were to a limited extent gratified. It was in their attempt wholly to ignore these natural appetites that Jonathan Edwards and the clergy of the last century fell into their error.
I have alluded to the early church records of Plymouth as probably offering a peculiarly interesting field of inquiry in this matter. I have never seen those records, and know nothing of them; but as long ago as the year 1642 Governor Bradford had occasion to bewail the condition of affairs then existing at Plymouth,—“not only,” he declared, “incontinencie betweene persons unmaried, for which many both men and women have been punished sharply enough, but some maried persons allso”; and he exclaimed, “Marvilous it may be to see and consider how some kind of wickednes did grow and breake forth here, in a land wher the same was so much witnesed against, and so narrowly looked unto, and severly punished when it was knowne!” But finally, with great shrewdness and an insight into human nature which might well have been commended to the prayerful consideration of Jonathan Edwards and the revivalists of exactly one century later, Governor Bradford goes on to conclude that—
“It may be in this case as it is with waters when their streames are stopped or dammed up, when they gett passage they flow with more violence, and make more noys and disturbance, then when they are suffered to rune quietly in their owne chanels. So wikednes being here more stopped by strict laws, and the same more nerly looked unto, so as it cannot rune in a comone road of liberty as it would, and is inclined, it searches every wher, and at last breaks out wher it getts vente.”[22]
There is one other episode I have come across in my local investigations, of the same general character as those I have referred to, which throws a curious gleam of light on the problems now under discussion. I have already mentioned the fact, quite significant, that during the very period when the church was most active in disciplining cases of fornication, the court record of John Quincy shows that but one case of fornication was brought before him in forty-five years. This was in 1720, and the woman was bound over in the sum of £5 to appear before the superior court. That woman I take to have been a prostitute. Her case was exceptional, so recognized, and summarily dealt with. In the Braintree town records there are some mysterious entries which I am led to believe relate to another and similar case, but one in which the objectionable character was otherwise dealt with. In the midst of the Revolutionary troubles the following votes were passed at the annual town meeting held in the meeting-house of the Middle Precinct, now Braintree, on the 15th of March, 1779:—