[354] The weekly amount and the manner of enforcing payment are expressed in exactly the same terms as later adopted in the act of 1886 for the maintenance order.
[355] This order, like that for maintenance, may be discharged or varied on proof of the wife's adultery; and the weekly sum may be varied in amount with an alteration in the amount of the wife's or husband's means: Geary, op. cit., 366, 367, 369, 370.
[356] "If the husband goes out of the jurisdiction and leaves no tangible goods that are physically seizable, the wife is without remedy, however large be the husband's property in stocks and shares, etc., or by way of interest under a settlement." She may then apply for a judicial separation or a dissolution of marriage, when "she will obtain alimony in the usual way; and this will be indeed her only effectual course if the husband absconds."—Geary, op. cit., 367. Compare Gillet v. Gillet (1889), 14 P. D., 158.
[357] In Massachusetts the county courts had an equity jurisdiction; Mass. Col. Rec., V, 477, 478; Acts and Resolves, I, 75, 356; Washburn, Judicial Hist. of Mass., 34, 166, 167; Howard, Local Const. Hist., I, 330, 331. See the able article by Woodruff, "Chancery in Massachusetts," Law Quarterly Review (London, 1889), V, 370-86.
[358] An important epoch in the history of social progress is reached when our New England ancestors recognized the support of popular education as a proper function of local government. The event is all the more remarkable because it led the development of thought in the mother-country by more than two centuries and a half. However, the primary motive of the Massachusetts act of 1647 for the establishment of elementary and grammar schools was to provide religious knowledge. "It being one cheife p'iect of yt ould deluder, Satan, to keepe men from the knowledge of ye Scriptures, as in formr times by keeping ym in an unknowne tongue, so in these lattr times by p'swading from ye use of tongues, yt so at least ye true sence & meaning of ye originall might be clouded by false glosses of saint seeming deceivers, yt learning may not be buried in ye grave of or fathrs in ye church & co[=m]onwealth," etc.—Mass. Col. Rec., II, 203. Cf. also Howard, Local Const. Hist., I, 66-70; and idem, "The State University in America," Atlantic Monthly, LXVII (1891), 332 ff.
[359] Many of the enactments of the colonies are described by Lord Campbell as "anticipating and going beyond most of the salutary amendments which have been adopted in the reigns of William IV. and Victoria."—Goodwin, Pilgrim Republic, 251.
[360] Peter "Hobart": Goodwin, Pilgrim Republic, 596; Dexter, Congregationalism, 458 n. 166; Young, Chronicles of the Pilgrims, 402 n. 2.
[361] Winthrop, History of New England (ed. Savage, 1853), II, 382 (313).
[362] See especially Dexter, Congregationalism, 458, who has pointed out the error of Mr. Savage (Winthrop, Hist. of New England, II, 382 n. 2) in confusing the nuptials with the "contraction."
[363] The fact that ministers as such were not allowed to celebrate in New England until near the end of the seventeenth century is, of course, well known to students. Very many, however, who now insist on the religious ceremony are ignorant of the fact; and it is not a little surprising to find so reputable a writer as Auguste Carlier, speaking of the "émigrants dans la Nouvelle Angleterre," declaring that marriage "se formait sous les yeux et avec l'approbation du chef de famille; il était consacré par le pasteur; d'après les prescriptions impératives de la loi, mais surtout pour obéir à la conscience d'un devoir religieux."—Le mariage aux États-Unis, 8, 9.