been made acquainted with it by you know whome, which, if there had been any such intendment, I think had been but reason. But to let that passe, I pray you advise not to stirre in it, for it will not be affected for reasons I shall

show you.

"The Lord knows I have alwais resolved (and so hath my wife ever since the girl came to vs) to yielde her vp to be disposed by yourself to any of yours if ever the Lord should make her fitt and worthie.

“Now for the other for whom you writt. I confesse I cannot freelie yeald thereunto for the present, for these grounds. first: The girle desires not to mary as yet. 2ndlee: Shee confesseth (which is the truth) hereselfe to be altogether yett vnfitt for such a condition, shee beinge a verie girl and but 15 yeares of age. 3rdlie: Where the man was moved to her shee said shee could not like him. 4thlie: You know it would be of ill reporte that a girl because shee hath some estate should bee disposed of soe young, espetialie not having any parents to choose for her. ffifthlie: I have some good hopes of the child's coming on to the best thinges. And on the other side I fear I will say no more. Other things I shall tell you when we meet. If this will not satisfy some, let the Court take her from mee and place with any other to dispose of her. I shall be content. Which I heare was plotted to accomplish this end; but I will further enquire about it, and you shall know if it be true, for I know there are many passages about this busniss which when you heare of you will not like."

It is pleasant to record that all this match-making and machination came to naught. It would not have been strange if Governor Winthrop had deemed this girl old enough to be married. He had been but seventeen years old himself when he was married, but he was, so he writes, "a man in stature and understanding." He evidently was of the opinion that a child of fourteen or fifteen was of mature years. When his son John was but fourteen the governor made a will making the boy the executor of it.

These child-marriages were not abolished in America because maturity or majority was established at a greater age; for up to the Revolution boys reached man's estate at sixteen years of age, became tax-payers, and served in the militia. Early unions were controlled by restrictive laws, such as the one enacted in Massachusetts in 1646, that no female orphan during her minority should be given in marriage by any one except with the approbation of the majority of the selectmen of the town in which she resided. Another privilege of the girl orphan was that at fourteen she could choose her own guardian. Thus were children protected in the new world, and their rights

conserved.

CHAPTER X

T

OLDTIME DISCIPLINE

My child and scholar take good heed
unto the words that here are set,

And see thou do accordingly

or else be sure thou shalt be beat.

The English Schoolmaster. Edward Coote, 1680.

HE manner of oldtime children differed as much from the carriage of children to-day

as the severe and arbitrary modes of discipline of colonial days differed from the persuasive explanations, the moral inculcations and exhortations by which modern youth are influenced to obedience. Parents, teachers, and ministers chanted in solemn and unceasing chorus, "Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child," and they believed the only cure for that foolishness was in stern repression and sharp correction above all in the rod. They found abundant support for this belief in the Bible, their constant guide.

John Robinson, the Pilgrim preacher, said in his essay on Children and Their Education:

Surely there is in all children (though not alike) a stubbernes and stoutnes of minde arising from naturall pride which must in the first place be broken and beaten down that so the foundation of their education being layd in humilitie and tractablenes other virtues may in their time be built thereon. It is commendable in a horse that he be stout and stomackfull being never left to his own government, but always to have his rider on his back and his bit in his mouth, but who would have his child like his horse in his brutishnes ?"

The chief field of the "breaking and beating down" process was in school. English schoolmasters were proverbial for their severity, and from earliest days; though monks with their classes are never depicted with the rod.

We find Agnes Paston, in 1457, writing to London for word to be delivered to the schoolmaster of her son Clement, who was then sixteen years old:

"If he hath nought do well, nor wyll nought amend, pray hym that he wyll trewly belassch hym, tyll he wyll amend; and so did the last master, and the best that ever he had, at Cambridge. And say I wyll give hym X marks for hys labor, for I had lever he were beryed than lost for defaute."

She herself had "borne on hand" on her marriageable daughter; beating her every week, some