Every Day Life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony

by George Francis Dow

Third, County or Inferior Quarterly Courts that had jurisdiction in all cases and matters not reserved to the Court of Assistants or conferred upon commissioners of small causes. These courts also laid out highways, licensed ordinarys, saw that an able ministry was supported, and had general control of probate matters, and in 1664 were authorized to admit freemen.

The juries were made judges of the law and the fact and when upon a trial there was insufficient evidence to convict, juries were authorized to find that there were strong grounds of suspicion, and accordingly sentence afterwards was given by the Court. In order to facilitate court proceedings an excellent law was passed in 1656 which authorized the fining of a person 20 shillings an hour for any time occupied in his plea in excess of one hour.

John Winthrop with his company arrived at Salem in June, 1630, and ten weeks later the first court in the Colony was held at Charlestown. The maintenance of the ministry was the first concern, to be followed by an order regulating the wages of carpenters, bricklayers, thatchers and other building trades. Thomas Morton at "Merry Mount" was not forgotten for he was to be sent for "by processe," and a memorandum is entered to obtain for the next Court an estimate "of the charges that the Governor hathe beene att in entertaineing several publique persons since his landing in Newe England."

At the second meeting of the Court of Assistants, three of the magistrates were fined a noble apiece for being late at Court and three weeks later Sir Richard Saltonstall, because of absence, was fined four bushels of malt. It was at this Court that Thomas Morton was ordered "sett into the bilbowes" and afterwards sent prisoner into England by the ship called the Gifte. His goods were ordered seized and his house burnt to the ground "in the sight of the Indians for their satisfaction, for many wrongs he hath done them from time to time." Several towns were christened the names by which they are still known, and those who had ventured to plant themselves at Aggawam, now Ipswich, were commanded "forthwith to come away."

Aside from Morton's offences at Mount Wollaston, nothing of a criminal nature seems to have been brought to the attention of the Court until its third session on September 28th. To be sure the Governor had been consulted by the magistrates of the Colony at Plymouth concerning the fate of one John Billington of Plymouth who had murdered his companion John New-Comin. Billington was hanged, and "so the land was purged from blood."

Unless murder may have been committed at an earlier date by a member of some crew of unruly fishermen along the coast, this was the first murder committed in the English settlements about the Massachusetts Bay. But unfortunately it was not the last. Walter Bagnell's murder in 1632 was followed by that of John Hobbey and Mary Schooley in 1637, and the next year Dorothy, the wife of John Talbie, was hanged for the "unnatural and untimely death of her daughter Difficult Talby." The daughter's christian name at once suggests unending possibilities.

In the winter of 1646 a case of infanticide was discovered in Boston. A daughter of Richard Martin had come up from Casco Bay to enter into service. She concealed her condition well and only when accused by a prying midwife was search made and the fact discovered. She was brought before a jury and caused to touch the face of the murdered infant, whereupon the blood came fresh into it. She then confessed. Governor Winthrop relates that at her death, one morning in March, "after she was turned off and had hung a space, she spake, and asked what they did mean to do. Then some stepped up, and turned the knot of the rope backward, and then she soon died."

This curious "ordeal of touch" had also been applied the previous year at Agamenticus on the Maine Coast when the wife of one Cornish, whose bruised body had been found in the river, with her suspected paramour, was subjected to this supreme test. It is recorded that the body bled freely when they approached which caused her to confess not only murder but adultery, both of which crimes were punishable by death. She was hanged.