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By Root 1623 0

in 1668 “for frequent absenting themselves from the public worship of God on the Lord’s days.”6 In the province of Maine, in 1682, Andrew Searle paid a fine of five shillings “for not frequenting the publique worship of god” and instead “wandering from place to place upon the Lords days.”7 Virginia law (1662) required everyone who had “noe lawfull excuse” to resort “diligently to their parish church and chappell ... and there to abide orderly and soberly” each Sunday, on pain of a fine of fifty pounds of tobacco (the currency of the colony); and there was to be no traveling on Sundays, “except in case of emergency.”8 Once in church, too, a person was supposed to behave. Young Abiel Wood, of Plymouth, was brought to court in 1758, accused of “irreverently behaving himself by chalking the back of one Hezekiah Purrington Jr. with Chalk, playing and recreating himself in the time of publick worship.”9

Profaning the sabbath outside of church was also a definite offense. In 1656, a Boston man, Captain Kemble, sat in the stocks for two hours because of “lewd and unseemly behavior” on the sabbath. This consisted of kissing his wife; he had just returned from three years at sea. Thomas Thomson and John Horton, of western Massachusetts, were “admonished” and fined for making “a fray in the street in the Evening and about ½ houre after sun sett” on the sabbath.10 In 1712, a barber in Philadelphia was arrested for cutting hair on a Sunday.11 The fervor to enforce these laws seemed to wane a bit in the eighteenth century, for example in Philadelphia; and some colonies were more zealous than others. But Sunday laws were a feature of all the colonies.

The colonies in general made little or no distinction between sin and crime; piety and religion especially dominated the lives of Puritan leaders and divines. Religion was the cornerstone of their community. It was the duty of law to uphold, encourage, and enforce true religion. Government was “the instrument of God on earth.”12 The core of the criminal code consisted of norms that were not man-made but the gift and command of God. This was the colonial ethos. The goal of legal authority, as David Flaherty put it, was “to translate the divine moral law into criminal statutes, in the interests of popular morality.”13

In one part of the Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts this notion appeared quite graphically. The code contained a list of “capital laws.” Each one came came equipped with citations to the Bible. So, for example : “If any person slayeth another suddenly in his ANGER, or CRUELTY of passion, he shall be put to death. Levit. 24.17. Numb. 35.20.21.” Or: “If any man rise up by FALSE-WITNES wittingly, and of purpose to take away any mans life: he shal be put to death. Deut. 19. 16.18.16.” The citations would serve to remind the people (if they needed the reminder) where in the end these rules really came from. It reminded them, too, that transgression meant more than punishment here below; it was a ticket to the fires of Hell, to eternal damnation.

Victimless Crime; Communal Punishment

Since crimes were sins, and sins crime, there was no sharp line between “victimless crimes” and crimes of predation or violence. The idea of a victimless crime is distinctly modem. An offense against God was an offense against society, and a positive threat to the social order. When Sodom and Gomorrah flouted God’s will, his anger laid them waste.

Thus the codes, especially in Puritan New England, made crimes out of lying and idleness; they also punished fornication, adultery, sodomy and buggery;d general lewdness and bad behavior, and every sexual practice that stepped over the line of straight sex as the Bible approved it. The courts acted, in a way, as secular arms of the churches, which also punished these offenses, through reprimand, denial of privileges, and, in extreme cases, excommunication.15 In court, the minor offenses earned minor punishments; but punishment for more serious sexual crimes could be very severe. A man guilty of buggery could, by law, be put to death.

The harsh