Every Day Life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony

by George Francis Dow

While we are discussing matters relating to the Sabbath and to the church it may be well to allude to the ministry. It has been shown that the first concern of the Court of Assistants was a provision for the housing and care of the ministry. Much the larger number were godly men actuated by a sincere desire to serve their people and to preserve their souls. But many of them were men, not saints, and so possessed of men's passions and weaknesses. While all exercised more or less influence over the communities in which they lived, yet the tangible result must have been negative in some instances. Take for example the small inland town of Topsfield, settled about 1639. Rev. William Knight rendered mission service for a short time early in the 40's and a dozen years later Rev. William Perkins moved into town from Gloucester. He had been one of the twelve who settled the town of Ipswich in 1633; afterwards he lived at Weymouth where he was selectman, representative to the General Court, captain of the local military company and also a member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company. He also was schoolmaster in 1650 and the next year appears at Gloucester as minister, from which place he soon drifted into Court. Cross suits for defamation and slander were soon followed by the presentment of Mrs. Holgrave for unbecoming speeches against Mr. Perkins, saying "if it were not for the law, shee would never come to the meeting, the teacher was so dead ... affirming that the teacher was fitter to be a ladys chamberman, than to be in the pulpit."

Mr. Perkins removed to Topsfield in 1656. The next year he tried to collect his salary by legal process and again in 1660. Three years later a church was organized and their first minister was settled. He was a Scotchman—Rev. Thomas Gilbert. Soon Mr. Perkins was summoned to Salem Court where Edward Richards declared in court before Mr. Perkins' face, that the latter being asked whither he was going, said, to hell, for aught he knew. Of course Mr. Perkins denied the testimony. Later in the same year he was fined for excessive drinking, it appearing that he stopped at the Malden ordinary and called for sack. But goody Hill told him that he had had too much already and Master Perkins replied, "If you think I am drunk let me see if I can not goe," and he went tottering about the kitchen and said the house was so full of pots and kettles that he could hardly go.

But what of Mr. Gilbert. Three years after his settlement Mr. Perkins appeared in Court and presented a complaint in twenty-seven particulars "that in public prayers and sermons, at several times he uttered speeches of a high nature reproachful and scandalous to the King's majestie & his government." He was summoned into Court and bound over in £1000 to the next General Court where eventually he was solemnly admonished publicly in open court by the Honored Governor. With twenty-seven particulars, could a Scotchman restrain his tongue? Mr. Gilbert could not, and shortly Mr. Perkins brought two complaints of defamation of character. Mr. Gilbert also soon developed a love of wine for it appears by the court papers that one sacrament day, when the wine had been brought from the meetinghouse and poured into the golden cup, Mr. Gilbert drank most of it with the usual result, for he sank down in his chair, forgot to give thanks, and sang a Psalm with lisping utterance. He was late at the afternoon service, so that many went away before he came and Thomas Baker testified "I perceived that he was distempered in his head, for he did repeat many things many times over; in his prayer he lisped and when he had done to prayer, he went to singing & read the Psalm so that it could not be well understood and when he had done singing he went to prayer again, and when he had done he was going to sing again, but being desired to forbear used these expressions: I bless God I find a great deal of comfort in it; and coming out of the pulpit he said to the people I give you notice I will preach among you no more." His faithful wife testified that his conduct was due to a distemper that came upon him sometimes when fasting and in rainy weather. The following April he was again before the Court charged with many reproachful and reviling speeches for which he was found guilty and sharply admonished and plainly told "that if he shall find himself unable to demean himself more soberly and christianly, as became his office, they do think it more convenient for him to surcease from the exercise of any public employment." The stubborn Scot refused to submit and affixing a defiant paper to the meetinghouse door he deserted his office for three successive Sabbaths, when his exasperated people petitioned the Court to be freed from such "an intollerable burden" and so the relation ceased but not until further suits and counter suits had been tried for defamation, slander, and threatened assault.

His successor was Rev. Jeremiah Hobart, a Harvard graduate, who preached for a while at Beverly and found difficulty in collecting his salary. He remained at Topsfield eight years and during that time became a familiar figure at the County Courts, because of non-payment of salary, for cursing and swearing, and for a damaging suit for slander exhibiting much testimony discreditable to him. Even his brother ministers and the churches were not free from his reproachful and scandalous speeches so he at last was dismissed and two years later was followed by a godly man, Rev. Joseph Capen of Dorchester, who enjoyed a peaceful pastorate of nearly forty years.

The severe penalties of the English legal code were much modified in the Bay Colony but public executions continued until the middle of the nineteenth century and were usually more or less a public holiday. The condemned was taken in a cart through the streets to the gallows. Not infrequently a sermon was preached by some minister on the Sunday previous to the execution and speeches from the gallows always thrilled the crowd. The execution of pirates drew many people from some distance. Several Rhode Island murderers were executed and afterwards hung in chains. The gibbeting of the bodies of executed persons does not seem to have been general.[91]

While executions by burning took place in Europe, and Salem is sometimes accused of having burned witches at the stake, there are but two instances, so far as known, when this extreme penalty was inflicted in Massachusetts. The first occurred in 1681 when Maria, the negro servant of Joshua Lamb of Roxbury willfully set fire to her master's house, and was sentenced by the Court to be burned alive. The same year Jack, a negro servant, while searching for food set fire to the house of Lieut. William Clark of Northampton. He was condemned to be hanged and then his body was burnt to ashes in the same fire with Maria, the negress. The second instance of inflicting the penalty of burning alive occurred at Cambridge in the fall of 1755, when Phillis, a negro slave of Capt. John Codman of Charlestown, was so executed. She poisoned her master to death by using arsenic. A male slave Mark, who was an accomplice was hanged and the body afterwards suspended in chains beside the Charlestown highway where it remained for nearly twenty years,[92] Why was the woman deemed more culpable than the man in such instances of poisoning? The old English law so provided and at a later date, under Henry VIII, poisoners were boiled alive in oil. The last execution in Massachusetts for the crime of arson occurred on Salem Neck in 1821 when Stephen Merrill Clark, a Newburyport lad, fifteen years of age, paid the penalty. He had set fire to a barn in the night time endangering a dwelling house.

Ten years before the adoption of the "Body of Liberties," adultery became a capital crime in accordance with the Mosaic law. The first case was one John Dawe, for enticing an Indian woman. He was severely whipped, and at the next session of the General Court, the death penalty was ordered for the future. When we consider the freedom of manners of the time, the clothing worn by the women, the limited sleeping accommodations and the ignorance of the servants, it is remarkable that the penalty was inflicted in so few cases. The records are full of cases of fornication, uncleanness, wanton dalliance, unseemly behaviour, unchaste words, and living away from wife, and the more so during the earlier years. Possibly, the juries may have thought the penalty too severe and found the parties guilty only, of "adulterous behavior," which happened in Boston in 1645. This followed a case of the previous year where a young woman had married an old man out of pique and then received the attentions of a young man of eighteen. They both were hanged.

The Court Records of the County of Essex always must have a curious interest because of the witchcraft cases. But the first execution in Massachusetts for witchcraft did not take place in Salem, but in Boston, in 1648, when Margaret Jones of Charlestown was hanged. It was shown that she had a malignant touch, that she produced deafness, practiced physic, and that her harmless medicines produced violent effects. She foretold things which came to pass and lied at her trial and railed at the jury. The midwives found that mysterious excrescence upon her, and for all these crimes she was hanged, and as a proof from Heaven of the justice of her taking off there was a great tempest in Connecticut on the very hour she was executed.

But Essex County court records show several witchcraft cases during the first twenty-five years following the settlement. In September, 1650, Henry Pease of Marblehead, deposed that he heard Peter Pitford of Marblehead say that goodwife James was a witch and that he saw her in a boat at sea in the likeness of a cat, and that his garden fruits did not prosper so long as he lived near that woman, and that said Pitford often called her "Jesable." Erasmus James, her husband, promptly brought suit for slander, and at the next Court another suit for defamation by which he received 50s. damages. The court records show that this Jane James had previously made her appearance, for in June, 1639, Mr. Anthony Thatcher complained that she took things from his house. She and her husband were bound for her good behavior and "the boys to be whipped by the Governor of the Family where they had offended." Six years later, in September, 1645, John Bartoll said in open court that he could "prove Jane James a common lyer, a theif & a false forsworn woman," and a year later, in September, 1646, Thomas Bowen, and his wife, Mary, testified that Jane James spoke to William Barber in Bowen's house in Marblehead and Barber said, "get you out of doors you filthy old Baud or else I will cuttle your hide, you old filthy baggage," & he took up a firebrand but did not throw it at her. Peter Pitford's accusation was not the only one for in the following year John Gatchell said that Erasmus James's wife was an old witch and that he had seen her going in a boat on the water toward Boston, when she was in her yard at home. But Erasmus promptly brought suit in the Salem court and recovered a verdict in his favor.