Some Phases of Sexual Morality and Church Discipline in Colonial New England Part 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While examining the Braintree records I incidentally came across a singular and conclusive bit of unpublished doc.u.mentary evidence on this point in the records of the church of Groton; for, casually mentioning one day in the rooms of the Society the Braintree records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_ ...

in the Spring and Summer following, _Anno_ 1735 the Town seemed to be full of the Presence of G.o.d. It never was so full of _Love_, nor so full of _Joy_; and yet so full of Distress as it was then. There were remarkable Tokens of G.o.d's Presence in almost every House.... Our publick _Praises_ were then greatly enlivened.... In all _Companies_ on _other_ Days, on whatever _Occasions_ Persons met together, _Christ_ was to be heard of and seen in the midst of them. Our _young People_, when they met, were wont to spend the time in talking of the _Excellency_ and dying _Love_ of JESUS CHRIST, the Gloriousness of the way of _Salvation_, the wonderful, free, and sovereign _Grace_ of G.o.d, his glorious Work in the _Conversion_ of a Soul, the _Truth_ and Certainty of the great Things of G.o.d's Word, the Sweetness of the Views of his _Perfection &c._ And even at _Weddings_, which formerly were meerly occasions of Mirth and Jollity, there was now no discourse of any thing but the things of Religion, and no appearance of any, but _spiritual Mirth_."[13]

And it was this pestiferous stuff,--for though it emanated from the pure heart and powerful brain of the greatest of American theologians, it is best to characterize it correctly,--it was this pestiferous stuff that Wesley read during a walk from London to Oxford in 1738, and wrote of it in his journal,--"Surely this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes." Such was the prevailing spiritual condition of the period in which the entries I have read were made in the Braintree church records.

In the language of the text from which Dr. Colman preached on the occasion of the first stated evening lecture ever held in Boston, "Souls flying to Jesus Christ [were] pleasant and admirable to behold."

The brother clergyman[14] who prepared and delivered from the pulpit of the Braintree church a funeral sermon on Mr. Hanc.o.c.k referred to the religious excesses of the time, and described the dead pastor as a "wise and skilful pilot" who had steered "a right and safe course in the late troubled sea of ecclesiastical affairs," so that his people had to a considerable degree "escaped the errors and enthusiasm ... in matters of religion which others had fallen into."[15] Nevertheless it is almost impossible for any locality to escape wholly a general epidemic; and in those days public relations of experiences were not only usual in the churches, but they were a regular feature in all cases of admission to full communion. That this was the case in the Braintree church is evident from the extract already quoted from the records, when in 1722 "some persons of a sober life and good conversation signified their unwillingness to join in full communion with the church unless they [might] be admitted to it without making a Public relation of their spiritual experiences." It was also everywhere noticed that the women, and especially the young women, were peculiarly susceptible to attacks of the spiritual epidemic. Jonathan Edwards for instance mentions, in the case of Northampton, how the young men of that place had become "addicted to night-walking and frequenting the tavern, and leud practices," and how they would "get together in conventions of both s.e.xes for mirth and jollity, which they called frolicks; and they would spend the greater part of the night in them"; and among the first indications of the approach of the epidemic noticed by him was the case of a young woman who had been one of the greatest "company keepers" in the whole town, who became "serious, giving evidence of a heart truly broken and sanctified."

This same state of affairs doubtless then prevailed in Braintree, and indeed throughout New England. The whole community was in a sensitive condition morally and spiritually,--so sensitive that, as the Braintree records show, the contagion extended to all cla.s.ses, and, among those bearing some of the oldest names in the history of the towns.h.i.+p, we find also negroes,--"Benjamin Sutton and Naomi his wife," and "Jeffry, my servant, and Flora, his wife,"--grotesquely getting up before the congregation to make confession, like their betters, of the sin of fornication before marriage. It, of course, does not need to be said that such a state of morbid and spiritual excitement would necessarily lead to public confessions of an unusual character. Women, and young women in particular, would be inclined to brood over things unknown save to those who partic.i.p.ated in them, and think to find in confession only a means of escape from the torment of that hereafter concerning which they entertained no doubts; hence perhaps many of these records which now seem both so uncalled for and so inexplicable.

So far, however, what has been said relates only to the matter of public confession; it remains for others to consider how far a morbidly excited spiritual condition may also have been responsible for the sin confessed.

The connection between the animal and the spiritual natures of human beings taken in the aggregate, though subtile, is close; and while it is well known that camp-meetings have never been looked upon as peculiar, or even as conspicuous, for the continence supposed to prevail at them, there is no doubt whatever that in England the license of the restoration followed close on the rule of the saints. One of the authorities on New England history, speaking of the outward manifestations of the "Great Awakening," says that "the fervor of excitement showed itself in strong men, as well as in women, by floods of tears, by outcries, by bodily paroxysms, jumping, falling down and rolling on the ground, regardless of spectators or their clothes." Then the same authority goes on to add:--"But it was common that when the exciting preacher had departed, the excitement also subsided, and men and women returned peaceably to their daily duties."[16] This last may have been the case; but it is not probable that men and women in the condition of mental and physical excitement described could go about their daily duties without carrying into them some trace of morbid reaction. It was a species of insanity; and insanity invariably reveals itself in unexpected and contradictory forms.

But it is for others, like my friend Dr. Green, both by education and professional experience more versed in these subjects than I, to say whether a period of s.e.xual immorality should not be looked for as the natural concomitant and sequence of such a condition of moral and religious excitement as prevailed in New England between 1725 and 1745. I merely now call attention to the fact that in Braintree the Hanc.o.c.k pastorate began in 1726 and ended in 1743, and that it was during the Hanc.o.c.k pastorate, also the period of "the Great Awakening," that public confessions of fornication were most frequently made in the Braintree church; further, and finally, it was during the years which immediately followed that the great "tide of immorality" which the clergy of the day so much deplored, "rolled over the land."

But it still remains to consider whether the entries referred to in the church records must be taken as conclusive evidence that a peculiarly lax condition of affairs as respects the s.e.xual relation did really prevail in New England during the last century. This does not necessarily follow; and, for reasons I shall presently give, I venture to doubt it. In the first place it is to be remembered that the language used in those days does not carry the same meaning that similar language would carry if used now. For instance, when Jonathan Edwards talks of the youth of Northampton being given to "Night-walking ... and leud practices," he does not at all mean what we should mean by using the same expression; and the young woman who was one of the greatest "company keepers" in the whole town, was probably nothing worse than a lively village girl much addicted to walking with her young admirers after public lecture on the Sabbath afternoons,--"a disorder," by the way, which Jonathan Edwards says he made "a thorough reformation of ... which has continued ever since."[17]

So far the relations then prevailing between the young of the two s.e.xes may have been, and probably were, innocent enough, and nothing more needs be said of them; but coming now to the facts revealed in the church records, I venture to doubt the correctness of the inference as to general laxity which would naturally be drawn from them. The situation as respects s.e.xual morality which prevailed in New England during the eighteenth century seems to me to have been peculiar rather than bad. In other words, though there was much incontinence, that incontinence was not promiscuous; and this statement brings me at once to the necessary consideration of another recognized and well-established custom in the more ordinary and less refined New England life of the last century, which has been considered beneath what is known as the dignity of history to notice, and to which, accordingly, no reference is made by Palfrey or Barry, or, so far as I know, by any of the standard authorities: and yet, unless I am greatly mistaken, it is to this carefully ignored usage or custom that we must look for an explanation of the greater part of the confessions recorded in the annals of the churches. I refer, of course, to the practice known as "bundling."

I do not propose here to go into a description of "bundling,"[18] or to attempt to trace its origin or the extent to which it prevailed in New England during the last century. All this has been sufficiently done in the little volume on the subject prepared by Dr. H. R. Stiles, and published some twenty years ago. For my present purpose it is only necessary for me to say that the practice of "bundling" has long been one of the standing taunts or common-place indictments against New England, and has been supposed to indicate almost the lowest conceivable state of s.e.xual immorality;[19] but, on the other hand, it may safely be a.s.serted that "bundling" was, as a custom, neither so vicious nor so immoral as is usually supposed; nor did it originate in, nor was it peculiar to, New England. It was a practice growing out of the social and industrial conditions of a primitive people, of simple, coa.r.s.e manners and small means. Two young persons proposed to marry. They and their families were poor; they lived far apart from each other; they were at work early and late all the week. Under these circ.u.mstances Sat.u.r.day evening and Sunday were the recognized time for meeting. The young man came to the house of the girl after Sat.u.r.day's sun-down, and they could see each other until Sunday afternoon, when he had to go back to his own home and work. The houses were small, and every nook in them occupied; and in order that the man might not be turned out of doors, or the two be compelled to sit up all night at a great waste of lights and fuel, and that they might at the same time be in each other's company, they were "bundled" up together on a bed, in which they lay side by side and partially clothed. It goes without saying that, however it originated, such a custom, if recognized and continued, must degenerate into something coa.r.s.e and immoral. The inevitable would follow. The only good and redeeming feature about it was the utter absence of concealment and secrecy. All was open and recognized.

The very "bundling" was done by the hands of mother and sisters.

As I have said, this custom neither originated in nor was it peculiar to New England, though in New England, as elsewhere, it did lead to the same natural results. And I find conclusive evidence of this statement in all its several parts in the following extract from a book published as late as 1804, descriptive of customs, etc., then prevailing in North Wales. For the extract I am indebted to Dr. Stiles:--

"Sat.u.r.day or Sunday nights are the princ.i.p.al time when this courts.h.i.+p takes place; and on these nights the men sometimes walk from a distance of ten miles or more to visit their favorite damsels. This strange custom seems to have originated in the scarcity of fuel and in the unpleasantness of sitting together in the colder part of the year without a fire. Much has been said of the innocence with which these meetings are conducted; but it is a very common thing for the consequence of the interview to make its appearance in the world within two or three months after the marriage ceremony has taken place."

And again, referring to the same practice as it prevailed in Holland, another of the authorities quoted by Dr. Stiles, relating his observations also during the present century, speaks of a--

"courts.h.i.+p similar to bundling, carried on in ... Holland, under the name of _queesting_. At night the lover has access to his mistress after she is in bed; and upon application to be admitted upon the bed, which is of course granted, he raises the quilt or rug, and in this state _queests_, or enjoys a harmless chit-chat with her, and then retires. This custom meets with the perfect sanction of the most circ.u.mspect parents, and the freedom is seldom abused. The author traces its origin to the parsimony of the people, whose economy considers fire and candles as superfluous luxuries in the long winter evenings."

The most singular, and to me unaccountable, fact connected with the custom of "bundling" is that, though it unquestionably prevailed--and prevailed long, generally and from an early period--in New England, no trace has been reported of it in any localities of England itself, the mother country. There are well-authenticated records of its prevalence in parts at least of Ireland, Wales, Scotland and Holland; but it could hardly have found its way as a custom from any of those countries to New England. I well remember hearing the late Dr. John G. Palfrey remark--and the remark will, I think, very probably be found in some note to the text of his History of New England--that down to the beginning of the present century, or about the year 1825, there was a purer strain of English blood to be found in the inhabitants of Cape Cod than could be found in any county of England. The original settlers of that region were exclusively English, and for the first two centuries after the settlement there was absolutely no foreign admixture. Yet nowhere in New England does the custom of "bundling" seem to have prevailed more generally than on Cape Cod; and according to Dr. Stiles (p. 111) it was on Cape Cod that the practice held out longest against the advance of more refined manners. It is tolerably safe to say that in a time of constantly developing civilization such a custom would originate nowhere. It is obviously a development from something of a coa.r.s.er and more promiscuous nature which preceded it,--some social condition such as has been often described in books relating to the more dest.i.tute portions of Ireland or the crowded districts in English cities, where, in the language of Tennyson,--

"The poor are hovell'd and hustled together, each s.e.x, like swine."

Such a custom as "bundling," therefore, bears on its face the fact that it is an inheritance from a simple and comparatively primitive period. If, then, in the case of New England, it was not derived from the mother country, it becomes a curious question whence and how it was derived.

But no matter whence or how derived, it is obvious that the prevalence of such a custom would open a ready and natural way for a vast increase of s.e.xual immorality at any time when surrounding conditions predisposed a community in that direction. This is exactly what I cannot help surmising occurred in New England at the time of "the Great Awakening" of the last century, and immediately subsequent thereto. The movement was there, and in obedience to the universal law it made its way on the lines of least resistance. Hence the entries of public confession in the church records, and the tide of immorality in presence of which the clergy stood aghast.

But in order to substantiate this theory of an historical manifestation it remains to consider how generally the custom of "bundling" prevailed in New England, and to how late a day it continued. The accredited historians of New England, so far as I am acquainted with their writings, throw little light on this question. Mr. Elliott, for instance, in his chapter on the manners and customs of the New England people, contents himself with some pleasing generalities like the following, the correctness of which he would have found difficulty in maintaining:--

"With this exalted, even exaggerated, value of the individual entertained in New England, it was not possible that men or women entertaining it should yield themselves to corrupt or debasing practices. CHASt.i.tY was, therefore, a cardinal virtue, and the abuse of it a crying sin, to be punished by law, and by the severe reproof of all good citizens."[20]

According to this authority, therefore, as "bundling" was unquestionably both a "corrupt" and a "debasing practice," "it was not possible that men or women" of New England "should yield themselves" to it; and that ends the matter.

Pa.s.sing on from Mr. Elliott to another authority: in his recently published and very valuable "Economic and Social History of New England,"

Mr. Weeden has two references to "bundling." In one of them (p. 739) he speaks of it as "certainly an unpuritan custom" which was "extensively practised in Connecticut and Western Ma.s.sachusetts," against which "Jonathan Edwards raised his powerful voice"; and again he later on (p.

864) alludes to it as "a curious custom which accorded little with the New England character," and which "lingered among the lower orders of people ... prevailing in Western Ma.s.sachusetts as late as 1777." I am led to believe that the custom prevailed far more generally and to a much later date than these statements of Mr. Weeden would seem to indicate; that, indeed, it was continued even in eastern Ma.s.sachusetts and the towns immediately about Boston until after the close of the Revolutionary troubles, and probably until the beginning of the present century. The Braintree church records throw no light on this portion of the subject; but the Groton church records show that not until 1803 was the practice discontinued of compelling a public confession before the whole congregation whenever a child was born in less than seven months after marriage. Turning then to Worthington's "History of Dedham" (p. 109),--a town only ten miles from Boston,--I find that the Rev. Mr. Haven, the pastor of the church there, alarmed at the number of cases of unlawful cohabitation, preached at least as late as 1781 "a long and memorable discourse," in which, with a courage deserving of unstinted praise, he dealt with "the growing sin" publicly from his pulpit, attributing "the frequent recurrence of the fault to the custom then prevalent of females admitting young men to their beds who sought their company with intentions of marriage." Again, in a letter of Mrs. John Adams, written in 1784, in which she gives a very graphic and lively account of a voyage across the Atlantic in a sailing-vessel of that period, I find the following, in which Mrs. Adams, describing how the pa.s.sengers all lived in the common cabin, adds:--"Necessity has no law; but what should I have thought on sh.o.r.e to have laid myself down in common with half a dozen gentlemen? We have curtains, it is true, and we only in part undress,--about as much as the Yankee bundlers."[21] Mrs. Adams was then writing to her elder sister, Mrs. Cranch; they were both women of exceptional refinement,--granddaughters of Col. John Quincy, and daughters of the pastor of the Weymouth church. Mrs. Adams while writing her letter knew that it would be eagerly looked for at home, and that it would be read aloud and pa.s.sed from hand to hand through all her acquaintance, and this was in fact the case; so it is evident, from this easy, pa.s.sing allusion, that the custom of "bundling" was then so common in the community in which Mrs. Adams lived, that not only was written reference to it freely made, but the reference conveyed to a large circle of friends a perfect idea of what she meant to describe. At the same time the use of the phrase "the Yankee bundlers" indicates the social cla.s.s to which the custom was confined.

The general prevalence of the practice of "bundling" throughout New England, and especially in southeastern Ma.s.sachusetts, up to the close of the last century may therefore, I think, be a.s.sumed. I have already said that the origin of the custom was due to spa.r.s.eness of settlement, the primitive and frugal habits of the people permitting the practice, and the absence of good means of communication. It becomes, therefore, a somewhat curious subject of inquiry whether traces of "bundling" can be found in the traditions and records of any of our large towns. That it existed and was commonly practised within a ten-mile radius of Boston I have shown; but I greatly doubt whether it ever obtained in Boston itself.

Nevertheless, an examination of the church records of Boston, Salem, and more especially of Plymouth, would be interesting, with a view to ascertaining whether the spirit of s.e.xual incontinence prevailed during the last century in the large towns of New England to the same extent to which it unquestionably prevailed in the rural districts. My own belief is that it did so prevail, though the practice of "bundling" was not in use; if I am correct in this surmise, it would follow that the evil was a general one, and that "bundling" was merely the custom through which it found vent. In such case the cause of the evil would have to be looked for in some other direction. It would then, paradoxical as such a statement may at first appear, probably be found in the superior general morality of the community and the strict oversight of a public opinion which, except in Boston,--a large commercial place, where there was always a considerable floating population of sailors and others,--prevented the recognized existence of any cla.s.s of professional prost.i.tutes. On the one hand, a certain form of incontinence was not a.s.sociated either in the male or female mind with the presence of a degraded cla.s.s, while, on the other hand, the natural appet.i.tes were to a limited extent gratified. It was in their attempt wholly to ignore these natural appet.i.tes that Jonathan Edwards and the clergy of the last century fell into their error.