The lewd
offender was a man of wealth and influence, the father of Madam Sarah
Knights, the "fearfull female travailler" whose diary of a journey from
Boston to New York and return, written in 1704, rivals in quality if not in
quantity Judge Sewall's much-quoted diary. A traveller named Burnaby tells
of a similar offence of an English sea-captain who was soundly whipped for
kissing his wife on the street of a New England town on Sunday, and of his
retaliation in kind, by a clever trick upon his chastisers; but Burnaby's
narrative always seemed to me of dubious credibility.
Abundant proof can be given that the act of the legislature in 1649 was not
a dead letter which ordered that "whosoever shall prophane the Lords daye
by doeing any seruill worke or such like abusses shall forfeite for euery
such default ten shillings or be whipt."
The Vermont "Blue Book" contained equally sharp "Sunday laws." Whoever was
guilty of any rude, profane, or unlawful conduct on the Lord's Day, in
words or action, by clamorous discourses, shouting, hallooing, screaming,
running, riding, dancing, jumping, was to be fined forty shillings and
whipped upon the naked back not to exceed ten stripes. The New Haven code
of laws, more severe still, ordered that "Profanation of the Lord's Day
shall be punished by fine, imprisonment, or corporeal punishment; and
if proudly, and with a high hand against the authority of God--_with
death_.
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