[669] Acts and Resolves, I, 209; also Charters and General Laws of Mass., 283. Goddard, Mem. Hist. Bost., II, 415 n. 2, is plainly in error when he says that this act "suggested the leading incident of Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter." It probably originated in the similar law, already mentioned, for the punishment of adultery which is expressed in nearly the same words: see Acts and Resolves, I, 171.
[670] 5 Mass. Hist. Coll., V, 407 n. 1.
[671] Historical Magazine and Notes and Queries, II, 301.
[672] Sewall's Diary, in 5 Mass. Hist. Coll., V, 354. For the case see Noble's Recs. of the Court of Assistants, I, 361. Samuel Newton, of Marlborough, married his uncle's widow and had two children by her. This marriage was judged void "by the word of God, as also by the law of England": ibid., 342. Cf. Cowley, Our Divorce Courts, 30, 31.
[673] On white slaves in New England, and elsewhere in America, see the valuable article of Butler, "British Convicts Shipped to American Colonies," American Historical Review, II, 12-33.
[674] Weeden, Ecc. and Soc. Hist. of New England, II, 449, 450. Cf. his entire discussion of the "African Slave Trade" in New England, ibid., 449-72; and Bancroft, Hist. of U. S. (New York, 1888), II, 268-80.
[675] See his admirable Massachusetts: Its History and Historians (Boston, 1893).
[676] Compare Moore's article "Slave Marriages in Mass.," in Dawson's Hist. Mag., 2d series, V (Feb., 1869), 135, to which I am much indebted.
[677] Palfrey, Hist. of New England, II, 30, note; cf. Moore, loc. cit., 135-37.
[678] Sumner, in his speech in the Senate, June 28, 1854: Works, III, 384.