Some Phases of Sexual Morality and Church Discipline in Colonial New England Part 3

I have alluded to the early church records of Plymouth as probably offering a peculiarly interesting field of inquiry in this matter. I have never seen those records, and know nothing of them; but as long ago as the year 1642 Governor Bradford had occasion to bewail the condition of affairs then existing at Plymouth,--"not only," he declared, "incontinencie betweene persons unmaried, for which many both men and women have been punished sharply enough, but some maried persons allso"; and he exclaimed, "Marvilous it may be to see and consider how some kind of wickednes did grow and breake forth here, in a land wher the same was so much witnesed against, and so narrowly looked unto, and severly punished when it was knowne!" But finally, with great shrewdness and an insight into human nature which might well have been commended to the prayerful consideration of Jonathan Edwards and the revivalists of exactly one century later, Governor Bradford goes on to conclude that--

"It may be in this case as it is with waters when their streames are stopped or dammed up, when they gett pa.s.sage they flow with more violence, and make more noys and disturbance, then when they are suffered to rune quietly in their owne chanels. So wikednes being here more stopped by strict laws, and the same more nerly looked unto, so as it cannot rune in a comone road of liberty as it would, and is inclined, it searches every wher, and at last breaks out wher it getts vente."[22]

There is one other episode I have come across in my local investigations, of the same general character as those I have referred to, which throws a curious gleam of light on the problems now under discussion. I have already mentioned the fact, quite significant, that during the very period when the church was most active in disciplining cases of fornication, the court record of John Quincy shows that but one case of fornication was brought before him in forty-five years. This was in 1720, and the woman was bound over in the sum of 5 to appear before the superior court. That woman I take to have been a prost.i.tute. Her case was exceptional, so recognized, and summarily dealt with. In the Braintree town records there are some mysterious entries which I am led to believe relate to another and similar case, but one in which the objectionable character was otherwise dealt with. In the midst of the Revolutionary troubles the following votes were pa.s.sed at the annual town meeting held in the meeting-house of the Middle Precinct, now Braintree, on the 15th of March, 1779:--

"Voted That Doctor Baker be desired to leave this Town, also

"Voted, that the eight men that Doctor Baker gott a warrant for go immediately and Deliver themselves up to Justice."

Fifteen days later, at another meeting held on the 30th of March, this matter again presented itself, and the following entry records the action taken:--

"A motion was made to chuse a Committee to be Ready to appear and make a stand against any vexatious Law suit that may be brought against any of the Inhabitants of this Town by Doctor Moses Baker Then,

"Voted, that Thomas Penniman, Esq{r.} Col{o} Edmund Billings, Mr.

Azariah Faxon, Capt. John Vinton and Capt. Peter B. Adams be a Committee to use their Influence with proper authority to suppress, any vexatious Law suits that may be brought by Doctor Moses Baker against any of the Inhabitants of this Town and that said Committee shall be allowed by the Town for their time.

"Messrs William Penniman and Joseph Spear entered their dissent to the Last Vote, as being Illegal and Improper, as there was no such article in the warrant only in General Terms."[23]

I have endeavored to learn something of the transaction to which these mysterious entries of over a century ago relate, and the result of my inquiries seems to indicate a state of affairs then existing in the neighborhood of Boston very suggestive of those "White-cap" and "Moons.h.i.+ner" proceedings in the western and southern States, accounts of which from time to time appear in the telegraphic despatches to our papers. Dr. Moses Baker lived and practised medicine in what is now the town of Randolph, and in 1777 he was one of two physicians to whom the town voted permission to establish an inoculating hospital. In 1779 he was about forty years of age, and married. At the time there dwelt not far from where Dr. Baker lived a woman of bad reputation, with whom Dr. Baker was, whether rightly or not, believed to have improper relations. Certain men living in the neighborhood accordingly undertook to act as a local committee to enforce good morals; and this committee decided to ride Dr.

Baker and the woman in question together on horseback to a convenient locality near the meeting-house, and there tar and feather them. A broken-down old hack, deemed meet and appropriate for use as a charger in such case, was accordingly procured; and going to the woman's house, the _vigilantes_ actually took her from her bed, and, without allowing her to clothe herself, put her on the horse, and then proceeded to Baker's house.

He in the mean time had received notice of the proposed visit; and when the party reached their destination they found him indignant, armed and resolute. He threatened to shoot the first man who laid hands on him. This was a turn in affairs which the self-const.i.tuted vindicators of public morality had not contemplated, and accordingly they proceeded no further in their purpose. Dr. Baker was not molested, and the woman was released.

It is immaterial, so far as this paper is concerned, whether there was, or whether there was not, ground for the feeling against Baker. In the emergency he does not seem to have demeaned himself either as one guilty or afraid; and, as the action of the town meetings shows, he did not hesitate to bring the whole matter before the courts and into public notice. But for my present purposes this is of no consequence; the significance of the incident here lies in the confirmatory evidence which the extracts from the records afford of the inferences drawn from the facts set forth in the earlier part of this paper. The offending female in this case seems to have been what is known as a woman of bad or abandoned character; the man's relations with her are a.s.sumed as notorious. Here was a state of things which public opinion would not tolerate. Probably more than half of those who took part in the proposed vindication of decency and morals looked with indifference on the custom of "bundling." That was in antic.i.p.ation of marriage, and in its natural results there was nothing which savored of promiscuous incontinence. The extraordinary entries in the records show how fully the town sympathized with and supported the _vigilantes_, as they would now be called in Mexicanized parlance of the extreme Southwest. The distinction I have endeavored to draw between the excusable, if not permissible, incontinence of the New England country community of the last century, and the idea of promiscuous immorality as we entertain it, is clearly seen in this Baker episode.

Having now made use of all the original material the possession of which led me into the preparation of the present paper, it might at this point properly be brought to a close; but I am tempted to go on and touch on one further point which has long been with me a matter of doubt, and in regard to which I have been disposed to reach opposite conclusions at different times,--I refer to the comparative morality of the last century and that which is now closing. Has there been during the nineteenth century, taken as a whole, a distinct advance in the matter of s.e.xual morality as compared with the eighteenth? Or has the change, which it is admitted has taken place, been only in outward appearance, while beneath a surface of greater refinement human nature remains ever and always the same? It is unquestionably true that in a large and widely differentiated community like that in which we live the individual, no matter who he is, knows very little of what may be called the real "true inwardness" of his surroundings. Any one who wishes to satisfy himself on this point need only seek out some elderly and retired country doctor or lawyer of an observing turn of mind and retentive memory, and then, if the inquirer should be fortunate enough to lead such an one into a confidential mood, listen to his reminiscences. It has been my privilege to accomplish this result on several occasions; and I may freely say that I have always emerged from those interviews in a more or less morally dishevelled condition. After them I have for considerable periods entertained grave and abiding doubts whether, except in outward appearance and respect for conventionalities, the present could claim any superiority over the past.

A cursory inspection of the criminal and immoral literature of the day, which the printing-press now empties out in a volume heretofore undreamed of, tends strongly to confirm this feeling of doubt,--which becomes almost a conviction when, from time to time, the realistic details of some Lord Colin Campbell or Sir Charles Dilke or Charles Stewart Parnell scandal are paraded in the newspapers.

Yet, such staggering evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, I find myself unable to get away from the record; and that record, so far as it has cursorily reached me in the course of my investigations, leads me to conclude that the real moral improvement of the year 1891, as compared with the conditions in that respect existing in the year 1691 or even 1791, is not less marked and encouraging than is the change of language and expression permissible in the days of Shakspeare and of Defoe and of Fielding to that to which we are accustomed in the pages of Scott, Thackeray and Hawthorne.

For instance, again recurring to my own investigations, I have from time to time come across things which, as indicating a state of affairs prevailing in the olden time, have fairly taken away my breath. Here is a portion of a note from the edition of Thomas Morton's "New English Canaan," prepared by me some years ago as one of the publications of the Prince Society, which bears on this statement:--

"Josselyn says of the 'Indesses,' as he calls them [Indian women] 'All of them are of a modest demeanor, considering their savage breeding; and indeed do shame our _English_ rusticks whose ludeness in many things exceedeth theirs.' (_Two Voyages_, 12, 45.) When the Ma.s.sachusetts Indian women, in September, 1621, sold the furs from their backs to the first party of explorers from Plymouth, Winslow, who wrote the account of that expedition, says that they 'tied boughs about them, but with great shamefacedness, for indeed they are more modest than some of our English women are.' (Mourt, p. 59.) See, also, to the same effect Wood's _Prospect_, (p. 82). It suggests, indeed, a curious inquiry as to what were the customs among the ruder cla.s.ses of the British females during the Elizabethan period, when all the writers agree in speaking of the Indian women [among whom chast.i.ty was unknown] in this way. Roger Williams, for instance [who tells us that 'single fornications they count no sin'] also says, referring to their clothing,--'Both men and women within doores, leave off their beasts skin, or English cloth, and so (excepting their little ap.r.o.n) are wholly naked; yet but few of the women but will keepe their skin or cloth (though loose) neare to them, ready to gather it up about them.

Custome hath used their minds and bodies to it, and in such a freedom from any wantonnesse that I have never seen that wantonnesse amongst them as (with griefe) I have heard of in Europe' (_Key_, 110-11)."[24]

Again, I recently came across the following, which ill.u.s.trates somewhat curiously what may be called the social street amenities which a sojourner might expect to encounter in a large English town of a century ago. If ever there was a charming, innocent little woman, who, as a wife and mother, bore herself purely and courageously under circ.u.mstances of great trial and anxiety,--a woman whose own simple record of the strange experience through which she pa.s.sed appeals to you so that you long to step forward and give her your arm and protect her,--if there ever was, I say, a woman who impresses one in this way more than Mrs. General Riedesel, I have not met her. Mrs. Riedesel, as the members of this Society probably all know, followed her husband, who was in command of the German auxiliary troops in Burgoyne's army, to America in 1777, and in so doing pa.s.sed through England, accompanied by her young children. Here is her own account of a slight experience she had in Bristol, where, the poor little woman says, "I discovered soon how unpleasant it is to be in a city where one does not understand the language, ... and wept for hours in my chamber":--

"During my sojourn in Bristol I had an unpleasant adventure. I wore a calico dress trimmed with green taffeta. This seemed particularly offensive to the Bristol people; for as I was one day out walking with Madame Foy more than a hundred sailors gathered round us and pointed at me with their fingers, at the same time crying out, 'French wh.o.r.e!'

I took refuge as quickly as possible into the house of a merchant under pretense of buying something, and shortly after the crowd dispersed. But my dress became henceforth so disgusting to me, that as soon as I returned home I presented it to my cook, although it was yet entirely new."[25]

It was at Bristol also that the little German woman, hardly more than a girl, describes how, the very day after her arrival there, her landlady called her attention to what the landlady in question termed "a most charming sight." Stepping hastily to the window, Mrs. Riedesel says, "I beheld two naked men boxing with the greatest fury. I saw their blood flowing and the rage that was painted in their eyes. Little accustomed to such a hateful spectacle, I quickly retreated into the innermost corner of the house to avoid hearing the shouts set up by the spectators whenever a blow was given or received."

Street customs, manners and language are, to a very considerable extent, outward exponents of the moral condition within. It would not be possible to find any place in Europe now where women could be seen going about the streets in the condition as respects raiment which Josselyn, Winslow and Roger Williams seem to intimate was not unusual with the British females of their time; nor would a strumpet even, much less any decent woman, from a foreign land, be treated in the streets of any civilized city as Madame Riedesel describes herself as having been treated in the streets of Bristol in 1777. One cannot conceive of an adulterer or adulteress now doing public penance in a white sheet before a whole congregation a.s.sembled for the public wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d, nor of a really respectable young married couple standing up under the same circ.u.mstances and confessing to the sin of fornication. Even if such a thing were done, it would be looked upon as rather suggestive than edifying. All the evidence accordingly indicates that, morally, the improvement made in the nineteenth century as compared with those that preceded it has been more than superficial and in externals only,--that it has been real, in essentials as well as in language and manners. So, while it would not be safe to adopt Burke's splendid generality, that vice has in our time lost half its evil in losing all its grossness, yet it is not unfair to adopt the trope in a modified form, and a.s.sert that, in the matter of s.e.xual morality, vice in the nineteenth century as compared with the seventeenth or the eighteenth has lost some part of its evil in losing much of its grossness.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] History of Norfolk County, Ma.s.sachusetts, p. 231.

[2] In 1839 the Rev. William P. Lunt prepared and delivered before the First Congregational Church of Quincy two most scholarly and admirable historical discourses on the celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the gathering of the society. In the appendix to these discourses (p.

93) Dr. Lunt states that the earlier records of the church had never been in the possession of either of its then ministers, the Rev. Peter Whitney or himself; and he adds: "In a conversation with Dr. Harris, formerly the respected pastor of Dorchester First Congregational Church, I understood him to say that Mr. Welde, formerly pastor of what is now Braintree Church, had these records in his possession; but when he obtained them, and for what purpose, was not explained. They are probably now irrecoverably lost. As curious and interesting relics of old times, their loss must be regretted."

The extent of this loss is here stated by Dr. Lunt with great moderation.

The records in question cover the history of the Braintree church during the whole of the theocratic period in Ma.s.sachusetts; and, for reasons which will appear in my forthcoming history of Quincy, the loss of these records causes not only an irreparable but a most serious break, so far as Braintree is concerned, in the discussion of one of the most interesting of all the problems connected with the origin and development of the New England town, and system of town-government. There is room for hope that the missing volume may yet come to light.

[3] Proc. Ma.s.s. Hist. Soc., 2d series, vol. i. p. 239.

[4] "And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican."

[5] 3. "For I verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have judged already, as though I were present, concerning him that hath so done this deed.

4. "In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ,

5. "To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus."

[6] Ellis, The Puritan Age in Ma.s.sachusetts, 206-208.

[7] "5. To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus."

[8] Trumbull's Blue Laws, True and False, p. 37.

[9] Drake's History of Middles.e.x County, vol. ii. p. 371.

[10] Butler's History of Groton, pp. 174, 178, 181.

[11] Hutchinson's Diary and Letters, vol. i. p. 232.

[12] Palfrey, vol. v. p. 9.

[13] A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of G.o.d in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls, &c., 1738, pp. 8-10.

[14] The Rev. Ebenezer Gay, of Hingham.

[15] Lunt's Two Discourses, 1840, p. 48.

[16] Elliott's The New England History, vol. ii. p. 136.

[17] Narrative, pp. 4, 5.

[18] TO BUNDLE. Mr. Grose thus describes this custom: "A man and woman lying on the same bed with their clothes on; an expedient practised in America, on account of a scarcity of beds, where, on such occasions, husbands and parents frequently permitted travellers to _bundle_ with their wives and daughters." (_Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue._)

The Rev. Samuel Peters, in his "General History of Connecticut" (London, 1781), enters largely into the custom of bundling as practised there. He says: "Notwithstanding the great modesty of the females is such, that it would be accounted the greatest rudeness for a gentleman to speak before a lady of a garter or leg, yet it is thought but a piece of civility to ask her to _bundle_." The learned and pious historian endeavors to prove that _bundling_ was not only a Christian custom, but a very polite and prudent one.

The Rev. Andrew Barnaby, who travelled in New England in 1759-60, notices this custom, which then prevailed. He thinks that though it may at first "appear to be the effects of grossness of character, it will, upon deeper research, be found to proceed from simplicity and innocence." (_Travels_, p. 144.)