seemed to the Frenchman mere chance mishaps. But he grew sullen and peevish under the strain, and thus became less attractive to the lady, while her husband became more amiable in her eyes than ever. Thus her lingering virtue recalled her to

67

her allegiance. Such a procedure in so delicate an affair exhibits great knowledge of human nature, and still greater self-control. New England took the lead in a liberal civil divorce policy. The Puritans brought English law with them but parted from it in respect to divorce by adopting, as they thought, the rules of the New Testament. By following what they construed to be the spirit of the book, rather than the letter, they spread out from adultery and desertion as the only causes of divorce and by analogy included certain kindred offences until their legislation became broadly tolerant. The canonical decree of separation from bed and board was practically tho not entirely, dispensed with. On the other hand dissolution of the marriage bond was freely granted for a variety of causes, such as desertion, cruelty, or breach of the vow. Generally, tho not always, husband and wife received equal treatment at the hands of the law. The disposition of some to ignore legal process and part at will was not favored. Thus Rhode Island had a law that "if any persons in this colonie shall part themselves and marry again without the authority of the Court of Commissioners, or be convicted of carnal copulation with any other, they shall be punished as in case of adultery."

In Massachusetts, 1639, James Luxford, being presented for having two wives, his last marriage was declared void

Or a nullity thereof and to be divorced, not to come to the sight of her whom he last took, and he to be sent away for England

67 Compare Woolsey, "Divorce," in New Englander, vol. xxvii, 519; Howard, History of Matrimonial Institutions, vol. ii, 330.

by the first opportunity: and all that he hath is appointed to her whom he last married, for her and her children; he is also fined £100 and to be set in the stocks an hour upon the market day after the lecture.

He was probably one of the recreant husbands that left their legal wives in England.

In 1661 in Plymouth Elizabeth Burge was divorced from Thomas on scriptural grounds. He was severely whipped twice and soon left the colony.

In 1665 in Rhode Island Peter Tollman applied for a divorce from his wife on the ground of adultery. She confessed. The petition was at once granted and she was arraigned for sentence. The penalty was a fine and whipping. She was condemned to pay ten pounds and to receive fifteen stripes at Portsmouth on the following Monday and the next week fifteen more at Newport. On her petition for mercy the court, strangely enough, examined her as to whether she would return to her husband. She refused and was accordingly remanded for punishment.

At Plymouth, 1668, Goodwife Tubbs had eloped from the colony. The court gave her husband a divorce. On one occasion a certain W. Tubbs sought a divorce and, after patriarchal style, W. Peabody gave him a writing of divorcement with two witnesses. The General Court treated the document as a nullity and fined Peabody five pounds and each witness three pounds. In 1670 in Connecticut Hannah Huitt "having declared that she had not heard from her late husband, Thomas Huitt, for eight years and better, was declared to be at liberty to marry again as God shall grant her opportunity." In Plymouth colony, 1675, a peculiar decision was rendered. Edward Jenkins had petitioned for a divorce for his daughter because her

husband had been out of the colony and made no provision for her during seven years or more. The decision was: The court "sees no cause to grant a divorce, yet they do apprehend her to be no longer bound, but do leave her to her liberty to marry if she please.'

In one of the colonies in 1676, Elizabeth Rogers obtained a divorce from John. She was also "permetted to have her two children with her, because the said John R. had renounced all visible worship of New England, and declared against the Christian Sabbath." Some property that he owned was appropriated to the benefit of his children. In 1678 Hope Ambrose obtained a divorce from Daniel Ambrose for desertion, non-support of herself and children, and keeping a woman in Jamaica. Ambrose's mistresses appear in the record in unminced terms. When James Shiff's wife went off with another man, tho the deserted husband was not in Plymouth jurisdiction, the general court of that colony certified to his having a divorce from his own court. In 1683 John Warner, a deputy from Warwick, was divorced on petition of his wife for adultery and criminal violence to her and expelled from the Rhode Island Assembly.

When Sara Knight made her journey between Boston and New York in 1704 she found divorces plentiful in Connecticut. She writes:

These uncomely standaways are too much in vogue among the English in this indulgent colony as their records plentifully prove, and that on very trivial matters of which some have been told me but are not proper to be related by a female pen.

Various conditions contributed to liberal divorce in the colonies: rejection of the sacramental theory of marriage, the establishment of marriage as a civil rite, assimilated to a business contract, the numerous cases

of men that had left their wives in the old country, the great difficulty of leading the new life without wives and husbands, probably the feeling that population ought to be increased and family life promoted.

But not all applications for divorce were granted. The civil power aimed also to forestall the necessity for divorce. Thus in Plymouth colony on one occasion the court warned Edward Holman not to frequent the house of Thomas Shrieve and that Goodwife Shrieve should not frequent the house or company of Holman at their peril. This warning proved ineffectual and the next year they were ordered to avoid each other or be whipped. This threat seems to have sufficed. John Robinson, grandson of the Leyden pastor, was bound over once to carry himself properly toward Thomas Crippen's wife.

Sexual irregularity occasioned by slavery was sufficiently noteworthy. A Massachusetts law of 1705 condemns negroes and mulattoes guilty of improper intercourse with whites to be sold out of the province. The presence of the Indian race was also a temptation. Morton, in his "New England Canaan" tells of an Indian infant with gray "eies" whose

Father shewed him to us and said they were English mens eies, I tould the father that his sonne was bastard, hee re

plied . . hee could not tell; his wife might play the whore and this child the father desired might have an English name, because of the likeness of his eies which his father had in admiration, because of novelty amongst their nation.

The servant problem had already begun to be a source of family troubles. All the early travelers note the lack of good servants. Some resorted to Indians. The reverend Peter Thatcher of Milton, Massachusetts bought an Indian girl in 1674. One duty was to care

for the baby. "Came home," he writes, "and found my Indian girl had liked to have knocked my Theodorah on the head by letting her fall. Whereupon I took a good walnut stick and beat the Indian to purpose till she promised to do so no more." We find sad accounts of the desertion of aged colonists by their Indian servants. One tells that he took his "Pecod girle" as a "chilld of death" when but two years of age, reared her kindly, cared for her when she was sick, and finally was deserted by her in his time of need. Sewall had a free negro man-a devoted, faithful servant. By 1687 a French refugee wrote: "There is not a house in Boston however small may be its means, that has not one or two" negroes.

Some "help" was early hireable. Children of wellto-do citizens worked in domestic service.68 Roger Williams writes of his daughter's desiring to spend some time in service. Members of the rich Sewall's family lived out. Sons of Downing and Hooke went with their relative, Governor Winthrop, as servants. Children were bound out at eight, so that people could rear their own servants. The pious colonists felt great responsibility for their servants' souls.

But the problem was vexatious in spite of native, negro, and apprentice service. Downing wrote home to England to try to get good servant girls. Mary Dudley, daughter of Winthrop, writes of a very refractory bad maid. Reverend Ezekiel Rogers wrote in 1657, when extreme Puritanism was fading:

Hard to get a servant that is glad of catechizing or family duties. I had a rare blessing of servants in Yorkshire, and those that I brought over were a blessing, but the young brood doth much afflict me. Even the children of the godly here, and elsewhere make a woful proof.

68 Earle. Customs and Fashions in Old New England, 86-87.