A debtor in prison, swearing he has no estate, shall be led
out and sold to make satisfaction. (Altered in 1656.)
Whoever brings cards or dice into this Dominion shall pay a
fine of five pounds. (Barber.)
No one shall read common prayer, keep Christmas or Saints'
days, make minced pies, dance, play cards, or play on any
instrument of music except the drum, trumpet, and
jew's-harp. (Barber.)
Whoever wears clothes trimmed with gold, silver, or bone
lace, above two shillings by the yard, shall be presented
by the grand jurors, and the selectmen shall tax the
offender at three hundred pounds estate. (Several acts
governing the attire of the subjects.)
There was an ancient law in Massachusetts that ladies' dresses should be
made long enough to hide their shoe-buckles. In 1660 an act of the General
Court prohibited short sleeves, and required garments to be lengthened so
as to cover the arms to the wrists and gowns to the shoe-buckles;
"immoderate great breeches, knots of ribbon, broad shoulder bands, and
they be, silk roses, double ruffs and cuffs" were forbidden. In the same
colony, in 1653, I. Fairbanks was tried for wearing great boots, but was
acquitted.
Laws governing marriage and the marriage relation were rigorous.
When parents refuse their children convenient marriages, the
magistrate shall determine the point. (Reenacted with
alterations.)
The selectmen finding children ignorant may take them from
their parents and place them in better hands at the expense
of their parents. (Record.)
A wife shall be deemed good evidence against her husband.
Married persons must live together, or be imprisoned.
No man shall court a maid in person or by letter without
first obtaining consent of her parents; five pounds penalty
for the first offense; ten pounds for the second; and for
the third, imprisonment during the pleasure of the court.
A man that strikes his wife shall be fined ten pounds. A
woman that strikes her husband shall be punished at the
court's discretion.
Puritan New England was not alone among the colonies in adopting harsh
laws. Virginia went to extremes, as appears in the following extract from
"Laws of Virginia, at a Grand Assembly held at James City, 23d March,
1662":
In every county the court shall cause to be set up a
pillory, a pair of stocks, and a whipping-post near the
courthouse, and a ducking stool; and the court not causing
the said pillory, whipping-post, stocks, and ducking-stool
to be erected, shall be fined five thousand pounds of
tobacco to the use of the public.
Among commercial restrictions we find an enactment prohibiting the
planting of tobacco after July 10, which was done for "the improvement of
our only commodity, tobacco, which can no ways be effected but by
lessening the quantity and amending the quality."
Another object that the government had in view was to compel the people to
become silk-growers against their will. "Be it therefore enacted," says
the Legislature, "that every proprietor of land within the colony of
Virginia shall, for every hundred acres of land holden in fee, plant upon
the said land ten mulberry-trees at twelve feet distance from each other,
and secure them by weeding and a sufficient fence from cattle and horses."
Tobacco fines, as usual, were enacted in case the planting and weeding
were not duly performed according to the statute; and further:
There shall be allowed in the public levy to any one for
every pound of wound silk he shall make, fifty pounds of
tobacco, to be raised in the public levy, and paid in the
county or counties where they dwell that make it.
This act was passed in 1662, and probably continued in force for a long
time; but Virginia did not therefore become a silk-growing country, nor
has it yet, though many parts are well adapted to raise this commodity.
People, we presume, have hitherto found other things more profitable.
The following enactment is a mixture of the barbarous and the ludicrous:
Whereas many babbling women slander and scandalize their
neighbors, for which their poor husbands are often involved
in chargeable and vexatious suits, and cast in great
damages; be it therefore enacted, That in actions of
slander, occasioned by the wife, after judgment passed for
the damages, the woman shall be punished by ducking; and if
the slander be so enormous as to be adjudged at greater
damages than five hundred pounds of tobacco, then the woman
to suffer ducking for each five hundred pounds of tobacco
adjudged against the husband, if he refuses to pay the
tobacco.