Adultery: Adultery was a serious offense. The Puritans defined adultery as sex between a married
woman and any man other than her husband.
A married man who strayed was only guilty of fornication.
Adultery was punishable by death in seventeenth-century New
England. New England courts would
not convict, however, unless the evidence fully satisfied the standards of the
law. Courts could only convict if sex,
specifically defined as intercourse, was verified by confession or the
testimony of two witnesses. Since there
were few instances of transgressors being caught “in blazing offence” by two
witnesses simultaneously those accused of adultery were rarely executed. New England
courts often found individuals accused of adultery “not guilty according to
indictment” but nonetheless “guilty of lascivious, gross, and foul actions
tending to adultery.” The guilty were
punished by a whipping, a fine, or having to wear (or be branded with) the letter
“A.” By the eighteenth century the male involved in an adulterous affair could
be prosecuted for abduction; a woman was not considered to have the power to
consent—even to illicit sexual relations.
Bestiality: Bestiality was a capital offense. Some of those accused of bestiality came under suspicion after neighbors complained
of the birth of animals with features similar to those of the defendant. One Thomas
Hogg was accused of having sex with a sow after the birth of a piglet with
features resembling his own. Hogg had frequently offended his neighbors by
wearing torn breeches that left his genitals visible, “seeming thereby to
endeavor the corrupting of others.” Hogg was also reputed to be a liar and a
thief. Hogg denied having carnal
knowledge of pigs, and since there were no actual witnesses to his having been
sexually intimate with animals, he was acquitted of bestiality. He was, however, whipped for “his filthiness,
lying, and pilfering,” and ordered to “be kept with a mean diet and hard
labour, that his lusts may not be fed.”
Fornication. The large numbers of indentured
servants flooding into the colonies were forbidden to marry without the
permission of their masters. This
consent was practically never given, because any resulting pregnancy would
deprive the master of the woman’s work for which he had paid. Not surprisingly,
the birth rate of illegitimate children among female indentured servants was
much higher than that found among free women. In seventeenth-century Virginia the penalty for
a female indentured servant having an illegitimate child was an extension of
service for two years or a fine of two thousand pounds of tobacco. If the child
was fathered by a black man, the penalty was a public whipping and another full
term of indentured servitude.
Incest:
Men convicted of incest were condemned to wear
the letter “I” stitched to their clothing for the rest of their lives. The
label was a public humiliation that served to protect the community but also to
remind both the criminal and his neighbors of the heinous nature of the crime. Jonathan Fairbanks of Massachusetts was punished in this way. He was sentenced to be whipped with twenty
lashes, to stand at the gallows for one hour, and to wear an “I” for the rest
of is life.
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