In that way four persons could ride very
comfortably and sociably half-way to meeting, though they must have had
to make an early start to allow for the slow gait and long halts. At the
church the disburdened horses were tied during the long services to palings
and to trees near the meeting-house (except the favored animals that found
shelter in the noon-houses) and the scene must have resembled the outskirts
of a gypsy camp or an English horse-fair. Such obedience did the Puritans
pay to the letter of the law that when the Newbury people were forbidden,
in tying their horses outside the church paling, to leave them near enough
to the footpath to be in the way of church pedestrians, it did not prevent
the stupid or obstinate Newburyites from painstakingly bringing their
steeds within the gates and tying them to the gate-posts where they were
much more seriously and annoyingly in the way.
It is usual to describe and to think of the Puritan congregations as like
assemblies of Quakers, solemn, staid, and uniform and dull of dress; but
I can discover in historical records nothing to indicate simplicity,
soberness, or even uniformity of apparel, except the uniformity of fashion,
which was powerful then as now. The forbidding rules and regulations
relating to the varied and elaborate forms of women's dress--and of men's
attire as well--would never have been issued unless such prohibited apparel
had been common and universally longed-for, and unless much diversity and
elegance of dress had abounded.
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