Part 2 (1/2)

It has of course been noticed that a large proportion of the entries I have quoted relate to discipline administered in cases of fornication, in many of which confession is made by husband and wife, and is of acts committed before marriage. The experience of Braintree in this respect was in no way peculiar among the Ma.s.sachusetts towns of the last century.

While examining the Braintree records I incidentally came across a singular and conclusive bit of unpublished doc.u.mentary evidence on this point in the records of the church of Groton; for, casually mentioning one day in the rooms of the Society the Braintree records to our librarian, Dr. S. A. Green, he informed me that the similar records of the Groton church were in his possession, and he kindly put them at my disposal.

Though covering a later period (1765-1803) than the portion of the Braintree church records from which the extracts contained in this paper have been made, the Groton records supplement and explain the Braintree records to a very remarkable degree. In the latter there is no vote or other entry showing the church rule or usage which led to these post-nuptial confessions of ante-marital relations; but in the Groton records I find the following among the preliminary votes pa.s.sed at the time of signing the church covenant, regulating the admission of members to full communion:--

”June 1, 1765. The church then voted with regard to Baptizing children of persons newly married, That those parents that have not a child till seven yearly months after Marriage are subjects of our Christian Charity, and (if in a judgment of Charity otherwise qualified) shall have the privilege of Baptism for their Infants without being questioned as to their Honesty.”

This rule prevailed in the Groton church for nearly forty years, until in January, 1803, it was brought up again for consideration by an article in the warrant calling a church meeting ”to see if the church will reconsider and annul the rule established by former vote and usage of the church requiring an acknowledgment before the congregation of those persons who have had a child within less time than seven yearly months after marriage as a term of their having baptism for their children.”

The compelling cause to the confessions referred to was therefore the parents' desire to secure baptism for their offspring during a period when baptism was believed to be essential to salvation, with the Calvinistic h.e.l.l as an alternative. The constant and not infrequently cruel use made by the church and the clergy of the parental fear of infant d.a.m.nation--the belief ”that Millions of Infants are tortured in h.e.l.l to all Eternity for a Sin that was committed thousands of Years before they were born”--is matter of common knowledge. Not only did it compel young married men and women to shameful public confessions of the kind which has been described, but it was at times arbitrarily used by some ministers in a way which is at once ludicrous and, now, hard to understand. Certain of them, for instance, refused to baptize infants born on the Sabbath, there being an ancient superst.i.tion to the effect that a child born on the Sabbath was also conceived on the Sabbath; a superst.i.tion presumably the basis on which was founded the provision of the apocryphal Blue Laws of Connecticut,--

”Whose rule the nuptial kiss restrains On Sabbath day, in legal chains”;[8]

and there is one well-authenticated case of a Ma.s.sachusetts clergyman whose practice it was thus to refuse to baptize Sabbath-born babes, who in pa.s.sage of time had twins born to him on a Lord's day. He publicly confessed his error, and in due time administered the rite to his children.[9]

With the church refusing baptism on the one side, and with an eternity of torment for unbaptized infants on the other, some definite line had to be drawn. This was effected through what was known as ”the seven months'

rule”; and the penalty for its violation, enforced and made effective by the refusal of the rites of baptism, was a public confession. Under the operation of ”the seven months' rule” the records of the Groton church show that out of two hundred persons owning the baptismal covenant in that church during the fourteen years between 1761 and 1775 no less than sixty-six confessed to fornication before marriage.[10] The entries recording these cases are very singular. At first the full name of the person, or persons in the case of husband and wife, is written, followed by the words ”confessed and restored” in full. Somewhat later, about the year 1763, the record becomes regularly ”Confessed Fornication;” which two years later is reduced to ”Con. For.;” which is subsequently still further abbreviated into merely ”C. F.” During the three years 1789, 1790 and 1791 sixteen couples were admitted to full communion; and of these nine had the letters ”C. F.” inscribed after their names in the church records.

I also find the following in regard to this church usage in Worthington's ”History of Dedham” (pp. 108, 109), further indicating that the Groton and Braintree records reveal no exceptional condition of affairs:--

”The church had ever in this place required of its members guilty of unlawful cohabitation before marriage, a public confession of that crime, before the whole congregation. The offending female stood in the broad aisle beside the partner of her guilt. If they had been married, the declaration of the man was silently a.s.sented to by the woman. This had always been a delicate and difficult subject for church discipline. The public confession, if it operated as a corrective, likewise produced merriment with the profane. I have seen no instance of a public confession of this sort until the ministry of Mr. Dexter (1724-55) and then they were extremely rare. In 1781, the church gave the confessing parties the privilege of making a private confession to the church, in the room of a public confession. In Mr.

Haven's ministry, (1756-1803) the number of cases of unlawful cohabitation, increased to an alarming degree. For twenty-five years before 1781 twenty-five cases had been publicly acknowledged before the congregation, and fourteen cases within the last ten years.”

It will be noticed in the above extract that the writer says he had ”seen no instance of a public confession of this sort” prior to 1724, and that until after 1755 ”they were extremely rare.” In the case of the Braintree records, also, it will be remembered there was but one case of public confession recorded prior to 1723, and that solitary case occurred in 1683.

The Record Commissioners of the city of Boston in their sixth report (Doc.u.ment 114--1880) printed the Rev. John Eliot's record of church members of Roxbury, which covers the period from the gathering of the church in 1632 to the year 1689, and includes notes of many cases of discipline. Among these I find the following, the earliest of its kind:--

”1678. Month 4 day 16. Hanna Hopkins was censured in the Church with admonition for fornication with her husband before thei were maryed and for flying away from justice, unto Road Iland.” (p. 93.)

During the next eighteen years I find in these records only seven entries of other cases generally similar in character to the above, though the Roxbury records contain a number of entries descriptive of interesting cases of church discipline, besides many memoranda of ”strange providences of G.o.d” and ”dreadful examples of G.o.ds judgment.” It would seem, however, that the instances of church discipline publicly administered on the ground of s.e.xual immorality were infrequent in Roxbury, as in Dedham and Braintree, prior to the year 1725. As will presently be seen, a change either in morals or in discipline, but probably in the latter more than in the former, apparently took place at about that time.

So far as they bear upon the question of s.e.xual morality in Ma.s.sachusetts during the eighteenth century, what do the foregoing facts and extracts from the records indicate?--what inferences can be legitimately drawn from them? And here I wish to emphasize the fact that this paper makes no pretence of being an exhaustive study. In it, as I stated in the beginning, I have made use merely of such material as chanced to come into my hands in connection with a very limited field of investigation. I have made no search for additional material, nor even inquired what other facts of a similar character to those I have given may be preserved in the records of the two other Braintree precincts. I have not sought to compare the records I have examined with the similar records I know exist of the churches of neighboring towns,--such as those of Dorchester, Hingham, Weymouth, Milton and Dedham. So doing would have involved an amount of labor which the matter under investigation would not justify on my part. I have therefore merely made use of a certain amount of the raw material of history I have chanced upon, bringing to bear on it such other general information of a similar character as I remember from time to time to have come across.

Though the historians of New England, whether of the formal description, like Palfrey and Barry, or of the social and economic order, like Elliott and Weeden, have little if anything to say on the subject, I think it not unsafe to a.s.sert that during the eighteenth century the inhabitants of New England did not enjoy a high reputation for s.e.xual morality. Lord Dartmouth, for instance, who, as secretary for the colonies, had charge of American affairs during a portion of the North administration, in one of his conversations with Governor Hutchinson referred to the commonness of illegitimate offspring ”among the young people of New England”[11] as a thing of accepted notoriety; nor did Hutchinson, than whom no one was better informed on all matters relating to New England, controvert the proposition.

And yet, speaking again from the material which chances to be at my own disposal, I find, so far as Braintree is concerned, nothing to justify this statement of Lord Dartmouth's in the ma.n.u.script record book of Col.

John Quincy, which has been preserved, and is now in the possession of this Society. Colonel Quincy was a prominent man in his day and neighborhood; and the North Precinct of Braintree, in which he lived and was buried, when, nearly thirty years after his death, it was incorporated as a town, took its name from him. As a justice of the peace, Colonel Quincy kept a careful record of the cases, both civil and criminal, which came before him between 1716 and 1761, a period of forty-five years. These cases, a great part of them criminal, were over two hundred in number, and came not only from Braintree but from other parts of the old county of Suffolk. Under these circ.u.mstances, if the state of affairs indicated by Lord Dartmouth's remark, and Governor Hutchinson's apparent admission of its truth, did really prevail, many b.a.s.t.a.r.dy warrants would during those forty-five years naturally have come before so active a magistrate as John Quincy. Such does not seem to have been the case. Indeed I find during the whole period but four b.a.s.t.a.r.dy entries,--one in 1733, one in 1739, one in 1746, and one in 1761,--and, in 1720, one complaint against a woman to answer for fornication. Considering the length of time the record of Colonel Quincy covers, this is a remarkably small number of cases, and, taken by itself, would seem to indicate the exact opposite from the condition of affairs revealed in the church records of the same period, for it includes the whole Hanc.o.c.k pastorate. This record book of Colonel Quincy's I will add is the only original legal material I have bearing on this subject. An examination of the files of the provincial courts would undoubtedly bring more material to light.

I have only further to say, in pa.s.sing, that some of the other cases mentioned in this John Quincy record are not without a curious interest.

For instance, August 24, 1722, John Veasey, ”husbandman,” is put under recognizance in the sum of 5 ”for detaining his child from the public wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d, said child being about eleven years old.” On the same day John Belcher, ”cordwainer,” is put under a similar recognizance ”for absenting himself from the public wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d the winter past.” Eleazer Veasey,--the Braintree Veaseys I will say in pa.s.sing were members of the Church of England in Braintree, and not members of the Braintree church,--Eleazer Veasey is, on the 20th of September, 1717, fined five s.h.i.+llings to the use of the town poor for ”uttering a profane curse.” So also Christopher Dyer, ”husbandman,” ”did utter one profane curse,” to which charge he pleaded guilty, and, on the 17th of May, 1747, was fined four s.h.i.+llings for the use of the poor. In this case the costs were a.s.sessed at six s.h.i.+llings, making ten s.h.i.+llings as the total cost of an oath in Ma.s.sachusetts at that time; but as Dyer was a ”soldier of His Majesty's service,” the court added that if the fine was not paid forthwith, he (Dyer) ”be publickly set in the stocks or cage for the s.p.a.ce of three hours.”

Returning to the subject of church discipline and public confessions of incontinence, it will be observed that in the case of the North Precinct Church of Braintree the great body of these confessions are recorded as being made during the Hanc.o.c.k pastorate, or between the years 1726 and 1744. This also, it will be remembered, was the period of what is known in New England history as ”The Great Awakening,” described in the first chapter of the recently published fifth volume of Dr. Palfrey's work. Some writers, while referring to what they call ”the tide of immorality” which then and afterward ”rolled,” as they express it, over the land, so that ”not even the bulwark of the church had been able to withstand” it,--these writers, themselves of course ministers of the church, have, for want of any more apparent cause, attributed the condition of affairs they deplored, but were compelled to admit, to the influence of the French wars, which, it will be remembered, broke out in 1744, and, with an intermission of six years (1749-1755), lasted until the conquest of Canada was completed in 1760. But it would be matter for curious inquiry whether both the condition of affairs referred to and the confessions made in public of sins privately committed were not traceable to the church itself rather than to the army,--whether they were not rather due to the spiritual than to the martial conditions of the time.

I have neither the material at my disposal, nor the time and inclination to go into this study, both physiological and psychological, and shall therefore confine myself to a few suggestions only which have occurred to me in the course of the examination of the records I have been discussing.

”The Great Awakening,” so called, occurred in 1740,--it was then that Whitefield preached on Boston Common to an audience about equal in number to three quarters of the entire population of the town.[12] Five years before, in 1735, had occurred the famous Northampton revival, engineered and presided over by Jonathan Edwards; and previous to that there had been a number of small local outbreaks of the same character, which his ”venerable and honoured Grandfather Stoddard,” as Edwards describes his immediate predecessor in the Northampton pulpit, was accustomed to refer to as ”Harvests,” in which there was ”a considerable Ingathering of Souls.” A little later this spiritual condition became general and, so to speak, epidemic. There are few sadder or more suggestive forms of literature than that in which the religious contagion of 1735, for it was nothing else, is described; it reveals a state of affairs bordering close on universal insanity. Take for instance the following from Edwards's ”Narrative” of what took place at Northampton:--

”Presently upon this, a great and earnest Concern about the great things of Religion, and the eternal World, became _universal_ in all parts of the Town, and among Persons of all Degrees, and all Ages; the Noise amongst the _Dry Bones_ waxed louder and louder: All other talk but about spiritual and eternal things, was soon thrown by.... There was scarcely a single Person in the Town, either old or young, that was left unconcerned about the great Things of the eternal World.

Those that were wont to be the vainest, and loosest, and those that had been most disposed to think, and speak slightly of vital and experimental Religion, were now generally subject to great awakenings.... Souls did as it were come by Flocks to Jesus Christ.

From Day to Day, for many Months together, might be seen evident Instances of Sinners brought _out of Darkness into marvellous Light_, and delivered _out of an horrible Pit, and from the miry Clay, and set upon a Rock_, with a _new Song of Praise to G.o.d in their mouths_ ...