" The tithingman had a "spetial eye-out" on all bachelors,
who were also carefully spied upon by the constables, deacons, elders,
and heads of families in general. He might, perhaps, help to collect the
ministerial rate, though his principal duty was by no means the collecting
of tithes. He "worned peple out of ye towne." This warning was not at all
because the new-comers were objectionable or undesired, but was simply a
legal form of precaution, so that the parish would never be liable for the
keeping of the "worned" ones in case they thereafter became paupers. He
administered the "oath of fidelity" to new inhabitants. The tithingman
also watched to see that "no young people walked abroad on the eve of the
Sabbath,"--that is, on a Saturday night. He also marked and reported all
those "who lye at home," and others who "prophanely behaved, lingered
without dores at meeting time on the Lordes Daie," all the "sons of Belial
strutting about, setting on fences, and otherwise desecrating the
day." These last two classes of offenders were first admonished by the
tithingman, then "Sett in stocks," and then cited before the Court. They
were also confined in the cage on the meeting-house green, with the Lord's
Day sleepers. The tithingman could arrest any who walked or rode at too
fast a pace to and from meeting, and he could arrest any who "walked or
rode unnecessarily on the Sabath.
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