Society in the Massachusetts Bay in the seventeenth century was divided into several groups. First came the merchant class which also included the ministers and those possessed of wealth. Edward Randolph reported to the Lords of Trade in 1676, that in Massachusetts there were about thirty merchants worth from £10,000. to £20,000. "Most have considerable estates and a very great trade." Next came the freemen and the skilled mechanics. This class furnished the town officials and constituted the backbone of the colony. Then came the unskilled laborer and a step lower was the indentured servant. The merchant lived well and wore fine clothing forbidden to his more humble neighbors. The status of the servant may well be shown by the deposition presented in Court at Salem in 1657 by an apprentice to a stone-mason in the town of Newbury, Massachusetts, who testified that it was a long while before "he could eate his master's food, viz. meate and milk, or drink beer, saying that he did not know that it was good, because he was not used to eat such victualls, but to eate bread and water porridge and to drink water."[39]
It has been stated frequently that in the olden times in New England every one was obliged to go to church. The size of the meetinghouses, the isolated locations of many of the houses, the necessary care of the numerous young children, and the interesting side-lights on the manners of the time which may be found in the court papers, all go to show that the statement must not be taken literally. Absence from meeting, breaking the Sabbath, carrying a burden on the Lord's Day, condemning the church, condemning the ministry, scandalous falling out on the Lord's Day, slandering the church, and other misdemeanors of a similar character were frequent.
Drunkenness was very common in the old days. "We observed it a common fault in our young people that they gave themselves to drink hot waters immoderately," wrote Edward Johnson. Every family kept on hand a supply of liquor and wine, and cider was considered a necessity of daily living in the country, where it was served with each meal and also carried into the fields by the workers. It was stored in barrels in the cellar and the task of drawing the cider and putting on the table usually fell to the younger members of the family. A man would often provide in his will for the comfort of his loving wife by setting aside for occupancy during her life, one half of his house, with a carefully specified number of bushels of rye, potatoes, turnips and other vegetables; the use of a horse with which to ride to meeting or elsewhere; and lastly, the direction that annually she be provided with a certain number of barrels of cider—sometimes as many as eight.
Rev. Edward Holyoke, the President of Harvard College, was in the habit of laying in each year thirty or more barrels of cider as he had to provide for much entertaining. Late in the winter he would draw off part of his stock and into each barrel he would pour a bottle of spirit and a month later some of this blend would be bottled for use on special occasions.
What was their conduct not only in their homes but in their relations with their neighbors? Did they live peaceably and work together in building up the settlements? Did they set up in the wilderness domestic relations exactly like those they had abandoned overseas? It was a raw frontier country to which they came and it is apparent that at the outset they felt themselves to be transplanted Englishmen. So far as possible they lived the lives to which they had been accustomed and they engrafted in their new homes the manners and customs of the generations behind them. Most of them fully recognized, however, that they were not to return; that they had cut loose from the old home ties and it was not long before the necessities and limitations of frontier life brought about changed conditions in every direction. Politically, religiously and socially, they were in a different relation than formerly in the English parish life. Many of them, especially those somewhat removed from the immediate supervision of magistrate and minister, before long seem to have shown a tendency to follow the natural bent of the frontiersman toward independent thought and action. Their political leaders made laws restricting daily life and action and their religious leaders laid down rules for belief and conduct, that soon were repellent to many. Civil and clerical records are filled with instances showing an evasion of and even contempt for the laws and rules laid down by the leaders of their own choosing. Some of it doubtless was in the blood of the men who had come in search of a certain individual freedom of action, but much of it may be attributed to frontier conditions and primitive living. There were many indentured servants, and rough fishermen and sailors have always been unruly. Simple houses of but few rooms accommodating large families are not conducive to gentle speech or modesty of manner nor to a strict morality. The craving for landholding and the poorly defined and easily removed bounds naturally led to ill feeling, assault, defamation, and slander.
CHAPTER IX
Sports and Games
This is a subject on which there is little recorded information to be found. Undoubtedly the background of English life, restrained by Calvinistic severity, was continued by the children and youth among the settlers. This must have been among the commonplaces of daily life and of so little importance to the future that no one considered it worthy of recording. It is impossible to think of child life without its natural outlet of sports and games—throw ball, football, running, swimming, etc., and we know that dolls and toys for children were for sale in the shops of Boston and Salem as early as 1651.