[590] In general the later the date of the case, the smaller the fine. With few exceptions fines of 25 shillings or less are after 1745; and most of those for 5 shillings or under are many years later. The "married couples" and the "wives" are only fined. Eight "single women" have the alternative of fine or stripes as follows: One (1734), £5 or 5 stripes; two (1755, 1770), £3 or 10 stripes; two (1746, 1756), 50 shillings or 10 stripes, the first being an "old offender;" one (1751), an "old offender," 40 shillings or 10 stripes; one (1758), 10 shillings or 10 stripes; one (1761), 5 shillings or 10 stripes. One woman (1747), whose child is a mulatto bastard, is given 20 stripes and sold into "service." In two similar cases (1759, 1772) 10 and 20 stripes respectively are deemed sufficient; while in another instance (1761) an "old offender" is sentenced to 20 lashes. In the later years, it will be noted, stripes decrease in money value. On the other hand, with the progress in humanism, they are probably lighter and therefore worth less.
[591] During the period are also fifteen cases of putative fathers. Voluntary accusations of putative fathers were looked on with suspicion. In the fragments of later records of Suffolk it is not uncommon for the court to refuse to put the woman on her oath in such cases.
[592] By this rule children born in less than seven months after marriage were refused baptism, that is, were put in peril of eternal damnation, unless the parents made public confession of their fault before the whole congregation: Adams, Some Phases of Sexual Immorality, 20 ff.
In like spirit other offenses were subjected to church discipline. For minor shortcomings, such as cheating, the culprit, after examination, was required to give "christian satisfaction" by public confession of penitence. If he refused, he was "suspended" from the communion. For adultery the penalty was "excommunication" on refusal to confess: and this punishment in Puritan New England meant as complete a social ostracism as it did in old England during the Middle Ages. Sometimes the most shameful wrongs resulted from these church trials; and this is well illustrated by the case of Abigail Muxon who, in 1783, on the unsworn testimony of two gossips, was condemned for alleged misconduct, thirty years after she was "suspended" on the same charge. She positively declared the evidence of the witnesses false. She was then an old woman; but "there was no friend or attorney to represent her before the self-righteous tribunal; and without cross-examining the unsworn witnesses, the church voted (men only were allowed to vote) that she is guilty of the charge." For weeks she refused to "confess," although she was "admonished" by the parson and "labored" with by the brethren. At last before a tribunal of six ministers "her excommunication was pronounced by Parson Everitt, who in his condemnation describes her 'as being visibly a hardened and impenitent sinner out of the visible Kingdom of Christ, one who ought to be viewed and treated by all good people as a heathen and publican in imminent danger of eternal perdition'": For a full discussion of this case see the fascinating book of Bliss, Colonial Times on Buzzard's Bay, 99-101, 111-14.
[593] Adams, op. cit., 26 ff. The following scarce works are in the Harvard library: Jonathan Edwards, Thoughts concerning the Present Revival of Religion in New England (London, 1745); Chauncey, A Letter from a Gentleman to Mr. George Wishart ... concerning the State of Religion in New England (Edinburgh, 1742), criticising Tennant and Whitefield; The State of Religion in New England (Glasgow, 1742); and especially the Letter from New England (1742), 4, describing the symptoms of "conversion."
[594] Adams, op. cit., 28.
[595] The church confessions of married couples and single persons continued long after confession ceased to be made in court. In Groton the "seven months rule" was put in force in 1765 and not abrogated until 1803. Under its operation "the records of the Groton church show that out of two hundred persons owning the baptismal covenant in that church during the fourteen years between 1761 and 1775 no less than sixty-six confessed to fornication before marriage. The entries recording these cases are very singular. At first the full name of the person, or persons in the case of husband and wife, is written, followed by the words 'confessed and restored' in full. Somewhat later, about the year 1763, the record becomes regularly 'Confessed Fornication' which two years later is reduced to 'Con. For.;' which is subsequently still further abbreviated into merely 'C. F.' During the three years 1789, 1790, and 1791 sixteen couples were admitted to full communion; and of these nine had the letters 'C. F.' inscribed after their names in the church records." The practice existed at Dedham, Roxbury, and probably throughout Massachusetts: Adams, op. cit., 20-23, citing Butler, History of Groton, 174, 178, 181; Worthington, History of Dedham, 108, 109; and Report of Boston Record Commission, vi, 93, passim.
[596] Adams, op. cit., 31 ff., 34. Judd, History of Hadley (Northampton, 1863), 247, note, mentions Jonathan Edwards's sermon against bundling.
[597] Mielziner, The Jewish Law of Marriage and Divorce, 75.
[598] Deut. 20:7; 22:22-29.