The Tithingman and the Sleepers.
The most grotesque, the most extraordinary, the most highly colored figure
in the dull New England church-life was the tithingman. This fairly
burlesque creature impresses me always with a sense of unreality, of
incongruity, of strange happening, like a jesting clown in a procession of
monks, like a strain of low comedy in the sober religious drama of early
New England Puritan life; so out of place, so unreal is this fussy,
pompous, restless tithingman, with his fantastic wand of office fringed
with dangling foxtails,--creaking, bustling, strutting, peering around the
quiet meeting-house, prodding and rapping the restless boys, waking the
drowsy sleepers; for they slept in country churches in the seventeenth
century, notwithstanding dread of fierce correction, just as they nod
and doze and softly puff, unawakened and unrebuked, in village churches
throughout New England in the nineteenth century.
This absurd and distorted type of the English church beadle, this colonial
sleep banisher, was equipped with a long staff, heavily knobbed at one end,
with which he severely and pitilessly rapped the heads of the too sleepy
men, and the too wide-awake boys. From the other end of this wand of office
depended a long foxtail, or a hare's-foot, which he softly thrust in the
faces of the sleeping Priscillas, Charitys, and Hopestills, and which
gently brushed and tickled them into reverent but startled wakefulness.
One zealous but too impetuous tithingman in his pious ardor of office
inadvertently applied the wrong end, the end with the heavy knob, the
masculine end, to a drowsy matron's head; and for this severely ungallant
mistake he was cautioned by the ruling elders to thereafter use "more
discresing and less heist."
Another over-watchful Newbury "awakener" rapped on the head a nodding man
who protested indignantly that he was wide-awake, and was only bowing in
solemn assent and approval of the minister's arguments. Roger Scott, of
Lynn, in 1643 struck the tithingman who thus roughly and suddenly wakened
him; and poor sleepy and bewildered Roger, who is branded through all time
as "a common sleeper at the publick exercise," was, for this most naturally
resentful act, but also most shockingly grave offence, soundly whipped, as
a warning both to keep awake and not to strike back in meeting.
Obadiah Turner, of Lynn, gives in his Journal a sad, sad disclosure of
total depravity which was exposed by one of these sudden church-awakenings,
and the story is best told in the journalist's own vivid words:--
"June 3, 1616.--Allen Bridges hath bin chose to wake ye sleepers in
meeting. And being much proude of his place, must needs have a fox taile
fixed to ye ende of a long staff wherewith he may brush ye faces of them yt
will have napps in time of discourse, likewise a sharpe thorne whereby he
may pricke such as be most sound. On ye last Lord his day, as hee strutted
about ye meeting-house, he did spy Mr. Tomlins sleeping with much comfort,
hys head kept steadie by being in ye corner, and his hand grasping ye rail.
And soe spying, Allen did quickly thrust his staff behind Dame Ballard and
give him a grievous prick upon ye hand. Whereupon Mr. Tomlins did spring
vpp mch above ye floore, and with terrible force strike hys hand against
ye wall; and also, to ye great wonder of all, prophanlie exclaim in a loud
voice, curse ye wood-chuck, he dreaming so it seemed yt a wood-chuck had
seized and bit his hand. But on coming to know where he was, and ye greate
scandall he had committed, he seemed much abashed, but did not speak. And I
think he will not soon again goe to sleepe in meeting."
How clear the picture! Can you not see it?--the warm June sunlight
streaming in through the narrow, dusty windows of the old meeting-house;
the armed watcher at the door; the Puritan men and women in their
sad-colored mantles seated sternly upright on the hard narrow benches; the
black-gowned minister, the droning murmur of whose sleepy voice mingles
with the out-door sounds of the rustle of leafy branches, the song of
summer birds, the hum of buzzing insects, and the muffled stamping of
horses' feet; the restless boys on the pulpit-stairs; the tired, sleeping
Puritan with his head thrown back in the corner of the pew; the vain,
strutting, tithingman with his fantastic and thornéd staff of office; and
then--the sudden, electric wakening, and the consternation of the whole
staid and pious congregation at such terrible profanity in the house of
God. Ah!--it was not two hundred and forty years ago; when I read the
quaint words my Puritan blood stirs my drowsy brain, and I remember it all
well, just as I saw it last summer in June.
Another catastrophe from too fierce zeal on the part of the tithingman
is recorded. An old farmer, worn out with a hard Saturday's work at
sheep-washing, fell asleep ere the hour-glass had once been turned. Though
he was a man of dignity, for he sat in his own pew, he could not escape the
rod of the pragmatical tithingman. Being rudely disturbed, but not wholly
wakened, the bewildered sheep-farmer sprung to his feet, seized his
astonished and mortified wife by the shoulders and shook her violently,
shouting at the top of his voice, "Haw back! haw back! Stand still, will
ye?" Poor goodman and goodwife! many years elapsed ere they recovered from
that keen disgrace.
The ministers encouraged and urged the tithingmen to faithfully perform
their allotted work. One early minister "did not love sleepers in ye
meeting-house, and would stop short in ye exercise and call pleasantlie to
wake ye sleepers, and once of a warm Summer afternoon he did take hys hat
off from ye pegg in ye beam, and put it on, saying he would go home and
feed his fowles and come back again, and maybe their sleepe would be ended,
and they readie to hear ye remainder of hys discourse." Another time he
suggested that they might like better the Church of England service of
sitting down and standing up, and we can be sure that this "was competent
to keepe their eyes open for a twelvemonth."
All this was in the church of Mr. Whiting, of Lynn, a somewhat jocose
Puritan,--if jocularity in a Puritan is not too anomalous an attribute
to have ever existed. We can be sure that there was neither sleeping nor
jesting allusion to such an irreverence in Mr. Mather's, Mr. Welde's, or
Mr. Cotton's meetings. In many rigidly severe towns, as in Portsmouth in
1662 and in Boston in 1667, it was ordered by the selectmen as a proper
means of punishment that a "cage be made or some other means invented for
such as sleepe on the Lord's Daie." Perhaps they woke the offender up and
rudely and summarily dragged him out and caged him at once and kept him
thus prisoned throughout the nooning,--a veritable jail-bird.
A rather unconventional and eccentric preacher in Newbury awoke one sleeper
in a most novel manner. The first name of the sleeping man was Mark, and
the preacher in his sermon made use of these Biblical words: "I say unto
you, mark the perfect man and behold the upright." But in the midst of his
low, monotonous sermon-voice he roared out the word "mark" in a loud shout
that brought the dozing Mark to his feet, bewildered but wide awake.
Mr. Moody, of York, Maine, employed a similar device to awaken and mortify
the sleepers in meeting. He shouted "Fire, fire, fire!" and when the
startled and blinking men jumped up, calling out "Where?" he roared back in
turn, "In hell, for sleeping sinners." Rev. Mr. Phillips, of Andover, in
1755, openly rebuked his congregation for "sleeping away a great part of
the sermon;" and on the Sunday following an earthquake shock which was felt
throughout New England, he said he hoped the "Glorious Lord of the Sabbath
had given them such a shaking as would keep them awake through one
sermon-time." Other and more autocratic parsons did not hesitate to call
out their sleeping parishioners plainly by name, sternly telling them also
to "Wake up!" A minister in Brunswick, Maine, thus pointedly wakened one of
his sweet-sleeping church-attendants, a man of some dignity and standing
in the community, and received the shocking and tautological answer, "Mind
your own business, and go on with your sermon."
The women would sometimes nap a little without being discovered. "Ye women
may sometimes sleepe and none know by reason of their enormous bonnets. Mr.
Whiting doth pleasantlie say from ye pulpit hee doth seeme to be preaching
to stacks of straw with men among them."
From this seventeenth-century comment upon the size of the women's bonnets,
it may be seen that objections to women's overwhelming and obscuring
headgear in public assemblies are not entirely complaining protests of
modern growth. Other records refer to the annoyance from the exaggerated
size of bonnets. In 1769 the church in Andover openly "put to vote whether
the parish Disapprove of the Female sex sitting with their Hats on in the
Meeting-house in time of Divine Service as being Indecent." 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. Each had several
neighboring families (usually ten, as the word "tithing" would signify)
under his charge to watch during the week, to enforce the learning of the
catechism at home, especially by the children, and sometimes he heard them
"Say their Chatachize." These families he also watched specially on the
Sabbath, and reported whether all the members thereof attended public
worship. Not content with mounting guard over the boys on Sundays, he also
watched on weekdays to keep boys and "all persons from swimming in the
water." Do you think his duties were light in July and August, when school
was out, to watch the boys of ten families? One man watching one family
cannot prevent such "violations of the peace" in country towns now-a-days.
He sometimes inspected the "ordinaries" and made complaint of any disorders
which he there discovered, and gave in the names of "idle tiplers and
gamers," and he could warn the tavern-keeper to sell no more liquor to any
toper whom he knew or fancied was drinking too heavily. Josselyn complained
bitterly that during his visit to New England in 1663 at "houses of
entertainment called ordinaries into which a stranger went, he was
presently followed by one appointed to that office who would thrust himself
into his company uninvited, and if he called for more drink than the
officer thought in his judgment he could soberly bear away, he would
presently countermand it, and appoint the proportion beyond which he could
not get one drop." 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." Great and small alike were under his
control, as this notice from the "Columbian Centinel" of December, 1789,
abundantly proves. It is entitled "The President and the Tything man:"--
"The President, on his return to New York from his late tour through
Connecticut, having missed his way on Saturday, was obliged to ride a
few miles on Sunday morning in order to gain the town at which he had
previously proposed to have attended divine service. Before he arrived
however he was met by a Tything man, who commanding him to stop,
demanded the occasion of his riding; and it was not until the President
had informed him of every circumstance and promised to go no further
than the town intended that the Tything man would permit him to proceed
on his journey."
Various were the subterfuges to outwit the tithingman and elude his
vigilance on the Sabbath. We all remember the amusing incident in "Oldtown
Folks." A similar one really happened. Two gay young sparks driving through
the town on the Sabbath were stopped by the tithingman; one offender said
mournfully in excuse of his Sabbath travel, "My grandmother is lying dead
in the next town." Being allowed to drive on, he stood up in his wagon when
at a safe distance and impudently shouted back, "And she's been lying dead
in the graveyard there for thirty years."
Thus it may be seen that the ancient tithingman was pre-eminently a general
_snook_, to use an old and expressive word,--an informer, both in and
out of meeting,--a very necessary, but somewhat odious, and certainly at
times very absurd officer. He was in a degree a constable, a selectman, a
teacher, a tax-collector, an inspector, a sexton, a home-watcher, and above
all, a Puritan Bumble, whose motto was _Hie et ubique_. He was, in
fact, a general law-enforcer and order-keeper, whose various duties,
wherever still necessary and still performed, are now apportioned to
several individuals. The ecclesiastical functions and authority of the
tithingman lingered long after the civil powers had been removed or had
gradually passed away from his office. Persons are now living who in their
early and unruly youth were rapped at and pointed at by a New England
tithingman when they laughed or were noisy in meeting.