[609] Case of Daniels v. Bowin et ux.: ibid. (1764-65), fol. 4.
[610] Thus in 1686 John Row was sentenced for "committing folly with Martha Beale, then servant to his father, & publishing himself in marriage to her and now denying to accomplish the marriage."—MSS. Records of the County Court of Middlesex, IV, 218. For other cases of this kind see MSS. Records of the Superior Court of Judicature (1730-31), fol. 1; ibid. (1745-46), fol. 253; MSS. Early Court Files of Suffolk (Nov. 19, 1663), No. 600.
[611] Mass. Col. Rec., IV, Part II, 458.
[612] Plym. Col. Rec., V, 116.
[613] For many proofs of the niggardly economy and exceeding "nearness" of the old New Englander see Bliss, Colonial Times on Buzzard's Bay; Weeden, Ecc. and Soc. Hist. of N. E.; and especially the Diary and Letter-Book of Samuel Sewall.
[614] An example is afforded by the Plym. Col. Rec., IV, 163, where a stipulation is entered into between a widow and a widower about to marry. By this agreement the children are to remain "att the free and proper and onely dispose of theire owne naturall parents, as they shall see good to dispose of them." The wife is to retain "all her house and land goods & cattles, that shee is now possessed of, ... to dispose of them att her owne free will." If the husband die first, she is to have "one third pte ... of his estate that hee dieth possessed of ... during her life;" while in case of her death, the husband's property is to go to his heirs, "excepting her wearing apparrell and her bed and bedding ... which shee shall and may giue att her death to whom she pleaseth." For another such marriage agreement see MSS. Early Court Files of Suffolk (1671), No. 1063. In the MSS. Records of the Superior Court of Common Pleas for Middlesex (1707), I, 103, is a suit to recover a gift made to a fiancée as legacy.
[615] Weeden, Ecc. and Soc. Hist. of N. E., I, 413; cf. ibid., I, 420, II, 541 ff.; also Earle, Customs and Fashions, 62 ff., 43 ff.
[616] Thus in 1638 "Mary Joanes was consented to be taken care of by the countrey, and at the countreyes charge."—Mass. Col. Rec., I, 230. Four years later "It was ordered the Treasurer should give Mary Joanes five pounds against her Marriage."—Ibid., II, 20.
[617] Sewall, Diary, in 5 Mass. Hist. Coll., VI, 336. In like spirit the judge "dickers" with Joseph Dudley, whose daughter had been sought in marriage for Samuel Sewall, Jr.: idem, Letter-Book, in 6 Mass. Hist. Coll., I, 279-81; Diary, in 5 Mass. Hist. Coll., VI, 80.
[618] "Her father died in six years, leaving his fortune, which was large for that time, to his daughter and his widow. It was practically one estate for the mother lived in the most affectionate intimacy in Judge Sewall's family."—Weeden, Ecc. and Soc. Hist. of N. E., I, 420; cf. Hawthorne, Grandfather's Chair (Boston, 1893), chap. vi, 459-64.