"Humbly: Sheweth:
"That whereas your Honours Petitioner haueing liue under his Highness Jurisdiction in Westchester about fifteen years, during wch time your petitioner hath endeauoured to demeane himselfe as a true and Loyall subject and serviceable in his generation, to the best of his power, but through the unchastity and disloyalty of ye petitioners wife by name Mary Wood, sustained great detriment and endured a very troublesome and vexatious liueing to the Dishonour of God, and repugnant to the holy bond of wedlock, she haueing as much as in her lay endeauoured the totall ruine and destruction of your petitioner, by her most abominable words and actions, haueing openly confessed she hath defiled her marriage bedd, and that purposely to breed difference between your petitioner and her selfe, notwithstanding ye petitioner endeauoured to reclaime her, by all means lawfull, who yet continued the same and rather worse, and now purposely absented her selfe by reason she knows her selfe guilty and to prevent that shame and punishment due to her base and wicked actions....
"Yr Petitioner humbly beggs your Honrs would bee pleased to take your petitioners sad case into consideration, and if it shall seem good in your Honrs sight a separation may be made, otherwise noe [illegible] can be expected but a sad euent of such deplorable doings.
"and y^e Petitioner shall for
Euer Pray as in Duty bound."
[1110] Linn, Charter and Laws, 109, 110. This provision was abrogated by William and Mary, 1693, but re-enacted the same year: ibid., 110, note, 194 (the re-enacted law).
By the Dutch code fornicators, if single, are to marry or pay a heavy fine; O'Callaghan, Ordinances, 495. Under the duke of York the penalty is marriage, fine, or corporal punishment, in the discretion of the court: Duke of Yorke's Book of Laws: in Linn, Charter and Laws, 27. The New Jersey laws of "Carteret's time" (ca. 1675) contain the same provisions: Leaming and Spicer, Grants, 107; and the Pennsylvania statutes authorize the county court to impose "all or anie" of these three penalties: Linn, op. cit., 145, 210; Bioren, Laws, I, 2, c. 3.
[1111] For incest the guilty person "shall forfeit one-half of his estate, and both suffer imprisonment a whole year, in the house of Correction, at hard labour, and for the second offence, imprisonment in manner aforesaid during life."—Linn, op. cit., 110; abrogated and re-enacted in 1693: ibid., 194; and a similar law was passed in 1700: Bioren, Laws, I, 2, 6.
[1112] For bigamy, according to the Great Law, whosoever shall be "Convicted of having two wives or two husbands, att one and the same time shall be imprisoned all their Lifetime in the House of Correction, at hard labour, to the behoof of the former wife and children, or the former husband and children." When one of the persons is single and the other married, the penalty is the same: Linn, op. cit., 110, 111; abrogated and re-enacted in 1693: ibid., 194; and again in substance re-enacted in 1700: Bioren, Laws, I, 2, 6.
[1113] Gordon, Hist. of Pa., 557. But Gordon (op. cit., 70) is in error when he states that by the Great Law divorce was sanctioned after a "second" offense; and regarding this law some other mistakes occur.
[1114] Pa. Col. Rec., IX, 564, 566, 567, 568, 580.