CHAPTER XV.

LAWS AND COURTS.

The legal machinery at the outset was very simple. The Governor and his Assistants constituted at once the legislative and the judicial power. They enacted laws and arraigned and punished offenders. Thus we find that august body in 1630, adopting statesmanlike measures to secure the orderly settlement of the Colony, and ordering the squatter settlers to remove from Agawam; then, proceeding to order Thomas Morton of Mount Wollaston to be set in the bilboes and sent a prisoner to England for his un-Puritan courses. They set a price upon labor. "Carpenters, joyners, masons, bricklayers, sawyers, clapboard ryvers, thatchers, mowers, tylars and wheelwrights, were forbidden to take more than two shillings a day and every one was forbidden to give more, under penalty of 10s. to taker and giver. If their meat and drink were provided, their wages must not exceed 16d a day.

They made an example of Robert Clough by ordering his strong water taken from him for occasioning disorder, drunkenness and misdemeanor, by his unwise sale of it. Richard Duffy a servant of Sir Richard Saltonstall, was sentenced to be whipped for misdemeanor toward his master, and the great Sir Richard in his turn, was called to account for letting his cows hurt Sagamore John's corn, and ordered to give him a hogshead of corn in requital. John Shotswell was fined eleven shillings in Sept. 1633, "for distemping himself with drink at Agawam," and Robert Coles, for his excesses was fined and "enjoined to stand with a white sheet of paper on his back wherein A DRUNKARD shall be written in great letters, as long as the Court thinks meet." John Lee was sentenced to be whipped and fined for calling Mr. Ludlowe, "false-hearted knave and hard-hearted knave, heavy friend etc."

The selling of ammunition to Indians was forbidden under penalty of branding in one cheek, laws for the preservation of

good timber were enacted, and tobacco takers were taken under surveillance.

The Governor and his Assistants, in 1636, to secure the dispatch of public business, ordered four Courts to be held every quarter. One of these Courts was to hold its session in Ipswich and include Newbury within its jurisdiction. It was to be known as the Quarter Sessions Court, and it was provided that the magistrates, who lived in the vicinity, should sit as judges. Our Ipswich magistrates were Mr. Dudley, Mr. Dummer, Mr. Bradstreet, Mr. Saltonstall and Mr. Spencer. Mr. Symonds, Mr. Woodbridge and Mr. Hubbard were made eligible as judges in 1638. Denison attained the ermine later. This lower Court had power to try all civil causes, "whereof the debt or damage did not exceed £10, and all criminal causes not concerning life, member or banishment." Right of appeal to the Great and General Court was allowed.

The Kings arms were straightway erected in old Ipswich, and Ipswich Court was ready for its task. The original Records remain, and they afford most instructive and entertaining insight into the practical working of the Puritanic legal code. In the course of sixty years, a great variety of cases came before this tribunal for adjudication, some trivial, some ridiculous, many of weighty significance then but insignificant now, many fraught with sad reminders of stern delusions, but all illustrative of the tone and spirit of a Puritan town.

The dignity of the Court itself was of intense moment to the Magistrates, and any reflection upon it was instantly rebuked. Mr. Jonathan Wade, one of the leading citizens, made some speeches, "afronting the Court" in 1645, for which he was summoned to trial and fined sixteen shillings. John Broadstreet, a man of meaner position, for similar misdemeanor, was sentenced to sit an hour in the stocks. Ezekiel Woodward and Thomas Bishop were obliged to make public acknowledgment of this fault at the next lecture day.

Sundry offences against the awful sanctity of the Church and the Sabbath were dealt with, summarily. In the year 1647, the Town was plaintiff in suits against Thos. Rolingson, who lived close by the present Agawam House, and Robert Roberts, for refusing to pay the rate required of them toward

the expense of the new meeting-house. Rolingson paid in the end his 40s. and 17s2d more for costs. The Town was advised to compound with Roberts for 16. Joseph Fowler's spiteful charge that there were liars in the church, secured for him at place in the stocks, and Thomas Scott paid a fine for refusing to learn his catechism. Humphrey Griffin was fined 10s for unloading barley on the Sabbath before sunset, and John Leigh escaped punishment for working in the swamp on the Lord's Day, only by proving that it was done to stop the fire from harming himself and his neighbors.

Disturbers of the public worship on the Lord's day met their just deserts. In 1654, Edward Brydges had a legal admonition for disorder in the meeting house. In that same year, disorderliness had become so general and so offensive that the General Court took the matter in hand, and gave liberty to the officers of the congregation and the Selectmen of Towns to appoint one or two persons, "to reform all such disordered persons in the congregations, or elsewhere about the meeting houses." Our Town proceeded in 1657 to avail itself of the new statute, and appointed Thos. Burnham and Symon Tompson to keep a watchful eye upon the youth, and none too soon, for John Averill had been before the Ipswich Court in 1656 for striking Thomas Twigs in the meeting house, "in the time of public ordinances on the Sabbath."

For many years there was a vigorous spirit of disorder that must have marred the solemnity of many Sabbaths. The grouping of the young men and boys together was the prolific source of constant disorder. Sometimes the disturbance was violent, as when Thomas Bragg and Edward Cogswell fought together in the meeting house "on the Lord's day in time of exercise" in the year 1670, for which they were fined 10s apiece, or when Stephen Cross struck another worshipper.

Two young misses, Elizabeth Hunt and Abigail Burnam, so disturbed public service one Sunday in 1674, that they were arraigned before the Court, and their fathers admonished to reprove them becomingly, and Sam. Hunt Jr. was admonished. and fined for his light behaviour.

Old Salem in 1676 wrestled with the unruliness of the boys in this fashion:

"all ye boyes of ye towne are and shall be appointed to sitt upon ye three pair of stairs in ye meeting house on ye Lord's day, and Wm Lord is appointed to look after ye boys yt sitte upon ye pulpit stairs. Reuben Guppy is to look and order soe many of ye boyes as may be convenient, and if any are unruly to present their names as the law directs."1

But "disorderly carriages" increased still to the sorrow of all godly worshippers, and in 1657, in accordance with a precept from the General Court, a new office was created, that of Tithingman, and 24 men, good and true, including some of the most prominent citizens, were chosen by the Selectmen. The tithingman was a most important functionary. His business extended much beyond the meeting house and disorder therein. To each officer was assigned the oversight of ten families, hence the name, though the origin of the office itself is found in the Saxon times of old England.

Within his special precinct, he was instructed by common agreement of the Town officers in 1681, "to see that children and servants be taught to read and instructed in the capitall laws, and Catechism as the law p'vides, and that the Selectmen as they shall desire ym goe with ym to any persons to attend their dutye and where there is deficiency in any they are to inspect that the Laws be attended."

Furthermore, the Law enjoined them to inspect disorderly persons, and to p'sent the names of single persons that live out from under family government-to enter ordinaries and inspect them" and "whatever else tends to irreligion."

They were to admonish all offenders, and if this proved ineffectual, they were bound to make complaint to the Court. One Tithingman at least, pressed the law to the letter, as the Court Record bears witness, under the date April 10, 1683.

"William Knowlton upon complaint of John Edwards tithingman against him for keeping a pack of gaming cards in his house is sentenced according to Law to pay a fine of £5." Upon his submission, the Court ordered that "upon satisfying the informer his part as the law provides and paying 20s to the Treasurer and fees the rest be respitted."

Habitual neglecters were fined for their misconduct. Widow

1 "The Sabbath in Puritan Times," by Mrs. A. M. Earle, p. 55.

Goodhue was thus dealt with in 1647 and Thos. Lovell in 1671, and again in 1674. Thos. Lovell and Thos. Lovell, Jun., lived within a few rods, under the very droppings of the sanctuary. Their neglect was a rank offence, for which they paid a fine. Roger Darby and his wife, who lived in High St. close by the old Caleb Lord house, were warned, fined and dealt with harshly for similar fault. Some of these, if not all, were Quakers. A notable group of these enthusiasts faced the Court in September, 1658. Samuel Shattuck, celebrated in Whittier's poem, "The King's Missive," "having been apprehended by the constable two Lord's Days at the Quaker meeting and two days absence from the public meeting" was fined 30s. Nicolas Phelps was fined the same sum for equal offence. Joshua Buffum, for a single Sabbath's absence was fined 15s, "And for persisting still in their course and opinion as Quakers, the sentence of the Court is, these three be committed to the House of Correction, there to be kept until they give security to renounce their opinions or remove themselves out of the jurisdiction."

The intense interest that centred in these trials is wholly beyond our imagination. The first law against that "cursed set of heretics" called Quakers, enacted in 1656, forbade any captain to land them. Any individual of that sect was to be committed at once to the House of Correction, to be severely whipped on his or her entrance, and kept constantly at work, and none were suffered to speak with them. The next year, it was ordered that any Quaker, coming again into this jurisdiction, should have one of his ears cut off; for another offence, he should lose the other ear, and every Quaker woman should be severely whipped; for a third offence, the tongue was to be bored through with a hot iron. Ere long, sentence of death was ordered and executed in several cases at Boston. It was further decreed in 1661, that "any wandering Quakers be apprehended, stripped naked from the middle upward, tied to cart's-tayle and whipped thro the town." Persistently returning, they were to be branded with the letter R on the left shoulder. The repressive laws against this obnoxious sect were in full swing then, when Shattuck and his friends were brought to the bar of the Ipswich Court. Many of the Quakers had been guilty of great excesses in their assaults on the established wor