" The parish did
Disapprove, with a capital D, for the vote passed in the affirmative. There
is no record, however, to tell whether the Indecent fashion was abandoned,
but I warrant no tithingman was powerful enough to make Andover women take
off their proudly worn Sunday bonnets if they did not want to. Another town
voted that it was the "Town's Mind" that the women should take off their
bonnets and "hang them on the peggs," as did the men their headgear. But
the Town's Mind was not a Woman's Mind; and the big-bonnet wearers, vain
though they were Puritans, did as they pleased with their own bonnets.
And indeed, in spite of votes and in spite of expostulations, the female
descendants of the Puritans, through constantly recurring waves of fashion,
have ever since been indecently wearing great obscuring hats and bonnets in
public assemblies, even up to the present day.
The tithingman had other duties than awakening the sleepers and looking
after "the boyes that playes and rapping those boyes,"--in short, seeing
that every one was attentive in meeting except himself,--and the duties
and powers of the office varied in different communities. Several of these
officers were appointed in each parish. In Newbury, in 1688, there were
twenty tithingmen, and in Salem twenty-five. They were men of authority,
not only on Sunday, but throughout the entire week.
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