[504] Law of 1641: Whitmore, Col. Laws of Mass. (1660-72), 137.
[505] Dunton, Life and Errors, I, 103; idem, Letters from New England, 101, 102.
[506] Sewall's Diary, in 5 Mass. Hist. Coll., V, 490.
[507] Earle, Customs and Fashions, 57.
[508] Sewall's Diary, in 5 Mass. Hist. Coll., V, 491.
[509] Ibid., 503.
[510] Sewall's Letter-Book, in 6 Mass. Hist. Coll., I, 213.
[511] Sewall's Diary, in 5 Mass. Hist. Coll., VI, 24. In like spirit the judge manages the marriage of his daughter Mary with Sam Gerrish: Sewall's Letter-Book, in 6 Mass. Hist. Coll., I, 379; Diary, in 5 Mass. Hist. Coll., V, xxxviii; VI, 250, 251, 263. On these and other illustrations of New England courtship see Earle, Customs and Fashions, 56 ff.
[512] Mass. Col. Rec., I, 92 (1631); Whitmore, Col. Laws of Mass. (1660-72), 55 ("Body of Liberties," 1641), 128; ibid. (1672-86), 15; New Haven Col. Rec., II, 577; Trumbull, Blue Laws, 200; Conn. Col. Rec., I, 77; Trumbull, op. cit., 60; New Hamp. Prov. Papers, I, 385 (Cutt Code). Beginning with the "Body of Liberties," 1641, the capital law of Massachusetts cites Lev. 20:19; 18:20; Deut. 22:23, 24; and the laws of the other colonies are supported by the same or like passages of the Jewish Code.
[513] The "elders" being appealed to promptly decided that the three persons then lying in prison should be put to death, "if the law had been sufficiently published." But for the reasons named in the text the general court thought it was "safest that these persons should be whipped and banished": Winthrop, Hist. of New England, I, 309; Mass. Col. Rec., I, 198, 202, 203, 225. Compare the excellent monograph of Davis, The Law of Adultery and Ignominious Punishments, 6-11, who gives the details regarding this case and the law of 1631; and calls attention to the English act of 1650, which classes incest and adultery among felonies, citing thereon Pike, Hist. of Crime in England, II, 182; and Blackstone, Commentaries, IV, 64.