Sometimes the cases coming before Maisonneuve were of a purely domestic nature. On July 3, 1658, two women having quarrelled, each laid a complaint against the other of bad language. The wrong appearing to be on both sides, Maisonneuve gave each twenty-four hours, for their anger to evaporate, and to declare before Basset, the greffier, and two witnesses, that they had spoken in pure anger. If either of them refused she should pay fifty livres to the parish church and besides be forcibly constrained to acknowledge her fault. Both wisely took the cheaper course, as the acts of Basset prove. [80]
De Maisonneuve's skill had been shown in a judgment of July 13, 1656. A brave soldier, Saint Jacques, one Sunday morning when coming out of church after mass, had been attacked with a stick at the hands of an irate woman. He gallantly did not retaliate but contented himself with taking the case before the governor. The good lady was present, confident in the justice of her cause, for she accused the soldier of having got his deserts by her trouncing for having uttered a calumny against her honour. On cross-examination it appears that she heard the calumny, through another soldier, who related it to her as coming from the lips of Saint Jacques. This witness being called, he now owned that he had told the calumny to the woman but he had invented the story himself out of frivolousness, and that Saint Jacques was guiltless. This malicious meddler was ordered by Maisonneuve to pay a fine of twenty livres to the church, as his offence had been against God, and fifty to the woman for her wounded honour. She, in turn, for having struck an innocent man was condemned to pay twenty livres to the church for the offence against God, and to pay back to the wounded victim of her misplaced energy, the fifty livres received from the meddler.
In the case of grave public scandals de Maisonneuve had recourse to the sentence of banishment. A soldier of the garrison, having been appointed to be on guard at Point St. Charles, was accused of daily absenting himself from the guardhouse of the redoubt, and being found annoying an honest woman with his unseemly and scandalous discourse. In his sentence of November 4, 1658, Maisonneuve says: "We have cast him out of the garrison and condemned him to pay a penalty of 200 livres, applicable to some poor girls, to help them to get married at Ville Marie." In 1660 Maisonneuve, who was no respecter of persons, ordered perpetual banishment to one of the principal men of Montreal [81] for an offence with a woman; and her he permitted the husband either to send back to her father and mother, or to keep her shut up for the rest of her days.
We have referred to an ordinance issued in 1658 to insure public safety. He had now to issue proclamations to safeguard public morals. Accordingly, as his short notice of July 9th forbidding, under pain of confiscation, liquor to be smuggled from the boats arriving in the harbour, and requiring his permission, had not apparently been sufficiently observed, on the 18th day of January, 1659, he drew up a long proclamation, that was posted up by Basset, the official clerk of justice, at the parish church next day at the end of vespers, so that no one might be ignorant of it.
Maisonneuve, forced by circumstances revealed in the proclamation, was determined to put down the passion for games of chance, strong drink and blasphemy, as soon as they should show themselves. It is not difficult to imagine excesses creeping in during the long winter evenings in a small enclosed garrison town, where there was no outlet for higher forms of amusement, especially as fear of invasion kept the inhabitants closely confined. Three of his garrison, Sébastien Dupuis, Nicholas Duval and Pierre Papin, having, through drink and gambling, found themselves unable to pay their debts, had deserted the garrison and fled the neighbourhood. They were arrested at a distance of only four leagues from Ville Marie, brought back and confined in irons in the fort on January 8, 1659.
After stating the causes leading to his proclamation of January 18th the governor continued: "In consequence we forbid (1) Any person whatsoever, of whatever rank or condition, an inhabitant of this place or elsewhere, to sell, wholesale or retail, under any pretext whatsoever, without an order from us, expressed in writing, any intoxicating liquor, under penalty of an arbitrary fine, the payment of which will be rigidity and forcibly exacted (à lesquelles on sera contraint par corps).
"(2) Moreover, we interdict all games of chance.
"(3) We rescind and annul any promise, written or verbal, direct or indirect, made or to be made, as well for the aforesaid game or for any other sort of game, with a prohibition to tavern keepers to sue in a court of justice for the recovery of this kind of debts under a penalty of twenty livres' fine, and of the confiscation of the sums demanded.
"(4) As for those who shall be convicted of having taken to excess wine, eau de vie, or other intoxicating liquors, or having sworn by or blasphemed the holy name of God, they shall be chastised, either by an arbitrary fine or by corporal punishment, according to the exigency of the case.
"(5) To obviate the above mentioned desertions we declare, by the present observance, that all the fugitives shall be by the same convicted of the crime of desertion; and, moreover, that all who shall abet them in their flight, whether by concealment or assistance of any kind, shall be considered to be guilty of the same crime."