[563] Stiles, Windsor, 495; Weeden, Ecc. and Soc. Hist. of N. E., II, 739.
[564] Judd, Hadley, 247.
[565] "When a man is enamoured of a young woman and wishes to marry her, he proposes the affair to her parents.... If they have no objection, they allow him to tarry with her one night, in order to make his court to her. At their usual time the old couple retire to bed, leaving the young ones to settle matters as they can; who, after having sate up as long as they think proper, get into bed together also, but without putting off their undergarments, in order to prevent scandal. If the parties agree, it is all very well; the banns are published, and they are married without delay. If not, they part, and possibly never see each other again; unless, which is an accident that seldom happens, the forsaken fair one prove pregnant, and then the man is obliged to marry her, under pain of excommunication."—Travels in North America, 110, 111. Elsewhere he says that, while at first the practice may "appear to be the effects of grossness of character, it will, upon deeper research, be found to proceed from simplicity and innocence."—Ibid., 144. Cf. Adams, op. cit., 31, note; and Lodge, Short History, 438. The word "tarrying" is not always equivalent to "bundling," having a more general meaning. Nor was tarrying or bundling always restricted to one night; see Stiles, Bundling, 70, 71.
[566] See Stiles, op. cit., 51-60, for a long extract from the lively account of Peters, who says that in Connecticut bundling is "as old as the first settlement in 1634;" and that "about the year 1756 Boston, Salem, Newport, and New York, resolving to be more polite than their ancestors, forbade their daughters bundling on the bed with any young men whatever, and introduced a sofa to render courtship more palatable and Turkish;" but with more "natural consequences than all the bundling among the boors with their rurales pedantes through every village in New England besides." Of course, all this must be swallowed with a very large "grain of salt."
[567] Stiles, op. cit., 66.
[568] Anbury, Travels through the Interior Parts of America; in a Series of Letters (new ed., London, 1781), II, 37-40: cited by Stiles, op. cit., 66 ff. In a subsequent letter Anbury plagiarizes the passage from Burnaby which we have quoted in a preceding note.
[569] According to Worthington's History of Dedham (1827), 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.'"—Adams, op. cit., 35. Stiles, op. cit., 75-77, note, gives a long extract from Worthington, who represents Haven's sermon as having had a powerful influence in setting aside the custom of bundling. But already before this Jonathan Edwards had raised his voice against it.
[570] Adams, op. cit., 35; citing Mrs. John Adams's Letters (1848), 161.
[571] Stiles, op. cit., 110, note, where personal testimony is adduced.
[572] See the Appendix to Stiles, op. cit., 113-25, where an article from the Yankee, of Aug. 13, 1828, containing the letter mentioned, is quoted. A search in the manuscript court records reveals not a single clear case of bundling. On Jan. 30, 1709-10, Jane Lee, widow, was presented and acquitted in Charlestown for conduct resembling bundling: MSS. Records of the Court of Gen. Sessions of Suffolk, I, 202. There is a more probable example in the MSS. Records of the Court of General Sessions of Middlesex (Dec. 15, 1702), I, 137.