[374] But publication of banns on the sabbath was not ordinarily prohibited, the laws being usually silent as to that, while naming other days. Probably in some towns from the beginning sabbath publication may have been customary, as it was, apparently, at Andover: Bailey, Hist. Sketches of Andover, 75. Cf. Bacon, Genesis of the New England Churches, 339-41, who also seems to misapprehend the attitude of the Separatist and Puritan in his anxiety to show that early New England marriages were not "godless."
[375] Bradford, Hist. of Plymouth Plantation, 327-30.
[376] Goodwin, Pilgrim Republic, 386.
[377] Cf. Palfrey, Hist. of New England, I, 543.
[378] Weeden, Ecc. and Soc. Hist. of New England, I, 217 ff., has some interesting gleanings on the civil contract.
[379] "To make a law that marriage should not be solemnized by ministers is repugnant to the laws of England; but to bring it a custom by practice for the magistrate to perform it is by no law made repugnant."—Winthrop, Hist. of New England, II, 313, 314 (382). Cf. Cook, in Atlantic Monthly, LXI, 351.
[380] By Brigham, Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, IV, 283, 284. In general on civil marriage in New England see Lechford, Plain Dealing (Boston, 1867), 86, 87, or in 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., III, 94; Dunton, Life and Errors (1686), in 2 Mass. Hist. Coll., II; Mem. Hist. of Boston, I, 196; Read, in Coll. of Old Col. Hist. Soc., No. 2, 9; Friedberg, Eheschliessung, 470-78; Drake, Making of New England, 98; Oliver, Puritan Commonwealth, 415; Hildreth, Hist. of U. S., I, 192; Weeden, Ecc. and Soc. Hist. of New England, I, 217 ff., and Index; Cook, "Marriage Celebration in the Colonies," in Atlantic Monthly, LXI, 350 ff.; and especially the excellent chapter in Earle's Customs and Fashions of Old New England, 36-81.
Sewall's Diary, in 5 Mass. Hist. Coll., V, VI, VII; and his Letter Books, in 6 Mass. Hist. Coll., I, II, are a mine of information on social usages connected with dowers, courting, and wedlock. For very interesting records of marriages celebrated by magistrates at Salem in the seventeenth century see Hist. Coll. Essex. Inst., I, II.
[381] Plym. Col. Rec., II, 155; IV, 10, 22, 43, 65, 73, 74, 108, 186; VI, 217, etc. Cf. 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., II, 270. In one instance we find the court abrogating a commission: Freeman, Hist. of Cape Cod, I, 208.
[382] Whitmore, Colonial Laws of Mass. (1660-72), 172; ibid. (1672-86), 102. Cf. Mass. Hist. Soc. Procds., IV, 283, 284. Compare Newhall, Ye Great and General Court, 367.