Crime and Punishment in American History - Lawrence M. Friedman [304]
2 Chapin, Criminal Justice in Colonial America, pp. 104-5. Ledra died (in his view) “filled ... with the joy of the Lord in the Beauty of Holiness,” though the Puritans surely felt otherwise.
3 Laws N.H. 1718, p. 121. Under a Maryland law of 1723, if one dared to “blaspheme or curse God, or deny our Saviour ... or ... the Holy Trinity,” the punishment, for the first offense, was to be “bored through the tongue”; for the second, to be “stigmatized by burning in the forehead with the letter B”; the punishment for the third was death. Records of the States of the United States: A Microfilm Compilation (1949), B. 2, Reel 1.2, Unit 1, p. 598.
4 W. W Hening’s Statutes at Large ... of Virginia, Vol. 1, pp. 168-69. Interestingly, the statute applied specifically to “persons brought upp in the christian religion.” For other blasphemy statutes, see Leonard W. Levy, Treason Against God: A History of the Offense of Blasphemy (1981), p. 333.
5 Leon DeValinger, Jr., ed., Court Records of Kent County, Delaware, 1680-1705 (1959), pp. 328-29.
6 Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, Massachusetts , Vol. 4, 1667-1671 (1914), pp. 89-90.
7 Robert E. Moody, ed., Province and Court Records of Maine, Vol. 3, 1680-1692 (1947), p. 93.
8 Hening, Statutes of Virginia (1823), Vol. 2, p. 48 (act 9 of 14 Charles II, March 1661-2).
9 David T. Konig, ed., Plymouth Court Records 1686-1859, Vol. 3, General Sessions of the Peace, 1748-81, p. 203 (1978). The boy was acquitted.
10 Joseph L. Smith, ed., Colonial Justice in Western Massachusetts (1639-1702): The Pynchon Court Record (1961), entry of June 22, 1664, p. 268. On Captain Kemble, see John C. Miller, The First Frontier: Life in Colonial America (1966), p. 87.
11 Miller, The First Frontier, p. 89.
12 Kathryn Preyer, “Penal Measures in the American Colonies: An Overview,” American Journal of Legal History 26:326, 333 (1982).
13 David Flaherty, “Law and the Enforcement of Morals in Early America,” in Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn, eds., Law in American History (1971), p. 203.
14 See Robert F. Oaks, “‘Things Fearful to Name’: Sodomy and Buggery in Seventeeth-Century New England,” Journal of Social History 12:268(1978).
15 See, in general, Emil Oberholzer, Jr., Delinquent Saints: Disciplinary Action in the Early Congregational Churches of Massachusetts (1956).
16 Laws N.H. 1718, p. 121.
17 Oaks, “Things Fearful to Name,” p. 275; 2 Records of Plymouth 44.
18 Records of the Court of Assistants of the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay, 1630-1692, Vol. 1 (1901), pp. 10-11.
19 H. Clay Reed and George J. Miller, eds., The Burlington Court Book: A Record of Quaker Jurisprudence in West New Jersey, 1680-1709 (1944), pp. 142-43.
20 DeValinger, Court Records of Kent County, pp. 298-99.
21 Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, Massachusetts , Vol. 4, 1667-71 (1914), p. 270.
22 Roger Thompson, Sex in Middlesex: Popular Mores in a Massachusetts County, 1649-1699 (1986), pp. 194-95.
23 Smith, Colonial Justice in Western Massachusetts, p. 289.
24 Ibid., p. 290.
25 Hening, Statutes of Virginia, Vol. 1, p. 433 (act II of March 1657-58).
26 Peter C. Hoffer and William B. Scott, eds., Criminal Proceedings in Colonial Virginia, Richmond County, 1711-54 (1984), p. 19. This was on July 7, 1715; on the same day, Francis Williams, suspected of living in “Adultory with a Mulatto Woman,” and John Champ, who allegedly was living with Mary Carter, were given very similar orders.
27 Thompson, Sex in Middlesex, p. 198.
28 Susie M. Ames, ed., County Court Records of Accomack-Northhampton, Virginia, 1632-1640 (1954), p. 111.
29 Smith, Colonial Justice in Western Massachusetts, p. 231.
30 J. Hall Pleasants, ed., Proceedings of the County Court of Charles County, 1658-1666 (Archives of Maryland, Vol. 53, 1936), p. 560.
31 Laws Gen’l. Ct. Mass. Bay, 1672, p. 6.
32 Charles