Curious Punishments of Bygone Days

								

heavy ffriend shalbe whipt and fyned XIs." Six months later he was again
in hot water:
"John Lee shalbe whipt and fyned for speaking reproachfully of the
Governor, saying hee was but a lawyer's clerk, and what understanding
hadd hee more than himselfe, also takeing the Court for makeing lawes to
picke men's purses, also for abusing a mayd of the Governor, pretending
love in the way of marriage when himselfe professed hee intended none."
In the latter clause of this count against John Lee doubtless lay the
sting of his offenses. For Governor Winthrop was very solicitous of the
ethics of love-making, and to deceive the affections of one of his
fen-county English serving-lasses was to him without doubt a grave
misdemeanor.
Those harmless and irresponsible creatures, young lovers, were menaced
with the whip. Read this extract from the Plymouth Laws, dated 1638:
"Whereas divers persons unfit for marriage both in regard of their yeong
yeares, as also in regarde of their weake estate, some practiseing the
inveagling of men's daughters and maids under gardians contrary to their
parents and gardians likeing, and of maide servants, without the leave
and likeing of their masters: It is therefore enacted by the Court that
if any shall make a motion of marriage to any man's daughter or mayde
servant, not having first obtayned leave and consent of the parents or
master soe to doe, shall be punished either by fine or corporall
punishment, or both, at the discretions of the bench, and according to
the nature of the offense."
The New Haven Colony, equally severe on unlicensed lovemaking, specified
the "inveagling," whether done by "speech, writing, message,
company-keeping, unnecessary familiarity, disorderly night meetings,
sinfull dalliance, gifts or, (as a final blow to inventive lovers) in
any other way."
The New Haven magistrates had early given their word in favor of a
whipping-post, in these terms:
"Stripes and whippings is a correction fit and proper in some cases
where the offense is accompanied with childish or brutish folly, or
rudeness, or with stubborn insolency or bestly cruelty, or with idle
vagrancy, or for faults of like nature."
In the "Pticuler" Court of Connecticut this entry appears. The
"wounding" was of the spirit not of the body:
"May 12, 1668. Nicholas Wilton for wounding the wife of John Brooks, and
Mary Wilton the wife of Nicholas Wilton, for contemptuous and
reproachful terms by her put on one of the Assistants are adjudged she
to be whipt 6 stripes upon the naked body next training day at Windsor
and the said Nicholas is hereby disfranchised of his freedom in this
Corporation, and to pay for the Horse and Man that came with him to the
Court to-day, and for what damage he hath done to the said Brooks His
wife, and sit in the stocks the same day his wife is to receive her
punishment."
In New York a whipping-post was set up on the strand, in front of the