the groom and his guardian gave security of fifty pounds that the marriage would take place if there was no lawful impediment.

Seventeenth century Virginia records at least one instance where a woman contracted not to marry any one but the other party to the pact tho apparently not pledging herself absolutely to him. Sarah Harrison, after "cordially promising" thus, married another man. And to increase the flagrancy of her wantonness she persistently refused in the marriage service to pledge herself to "obey." She was married without that promise.

Colonial courtship was no simple matter. Alsop said of Maryland in 1666:

He that intends to court a Maryland girl must have something more than the tautologies of a longwinded speech to carry on his design, or else he may (for ought I know) fall under the contempt of her frown.

One Maryland cavalier that tarried too long making an impression, as he thought, on a fair damsel found that she had thoroly whitewashed his black charger during his stay. Qne maiden that threw her suitor's hat into the fire saw him fling her bonnet after it and ultimately capitulated. The colonial records of 1657 show a courtship agreement in which a man undertook to leave his stepdaughter at a certain man's house where her expenses were to be paid by a young man who was to have the privilege of courting her there in order to settle a difficulty about a promise of marriage alleged to have been made by her and a rape committed by him on her.

A writer on colonial Culpepper County, Virginia, remarks that young people did not make love till their fathers had arranged the preliminaries. Virginia youths prosecuted their love affairs in fine style. They took up

the quest on their good steeds. The poetic souls wrote love verses to their charmers and published them in the Virginia Gazette.

The ruffianly Governor Nicholson proceeded otherwise. In a right Oriental manner he demanded the hand of a young girl and finding no favor with her or her parents threatened the lives of father and mother "with mad furious distracted speech." The brother of Commissary Blair was a would-be suitor. His excellency assailed Blair insanely: "Sir, your brother is a villain, and you have betrayed me;" and he swore revenge on the whole family. He vowed that if the girl married any rival he would cut the throat of bridegroom, minister, and justice that issued the license.

A Staunton man in 1764 set about courtship more discreetly. He wrote:

I intend to call. when down that I may no longer worship a shadow but either banish the idol or admire the fair, therefore must request you to let me know by the first conveyance the name of the charmer and whether the elder or the younger of the two sisters that bears the amiable character of being the most worthy of her sex, I shall likewise reconnoitre the fair enthusiast on this side of the stream, and by the assistance of our mutual friend Joel perhaps I may know how far my addresses there would be agreeable.

In South Carolina at the end of the seventeenth century young girls received beaus at three o'clock expecting them to leave about six as many families retired at seven in winter and seldom sat up in summer beyond eight. It is hard to realize how different life must have been when artificial lights were almost negligible and screen wire was unknown. It may be that the usage described belonged as did its narrator in the Puritan group, which was ridiculed by the neighbors.

John Wesley in Georgia became entangled in the

web of love. He was charmed by a designing damsel; but, warned by his friends and the Moravians, broke the engagement. Within eight days she married another man. Then came the famous episode of scandal to which reference will be made later.

A colonial traveler wrote thus:

Young women are affable with young men in America, and married women are reserved, and their husbands are not as familiar with the girls as they were when bachelors. If a young man were to take it into his head that his betrothed should not be free and gay in her social intercourse, he would run the risk of being discarded, incur the reputation of jealousy, and would find it very difficult to get married. Yet if a single woman were to play the coquette, she would be regarded with contempt. As this innocent freedom between the sexes diminishes in proportion as society loses its purity and simplicity of manners, as is the case in cities, I desire sincerely that our good Virginia ladies may long retain their liberty entire.

XV. REGULATION AND SOLEMNIZATION OF MARRIAGE IN THE SOUTHERN COLONIES

Owing to the presence of various sects and nationalities in the colonial South, marriage came under varying control.

Church of England bigotry is most conspicuous in Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina. In Virginia throughout the colonial period the ceremonial of the Church of England was prescribed by law. In Maryland Episcopal reaction gradually abrogated optional civil marriage, which had been allowed under the Catholic proprietors, and finally in 1777 saddled upon the people compulsory ecclesiastical marriage which continued to prevail there through the national period. In North Carolina initial tolerance was similarly abrogated during the colonial period. In the two southernmost colonies Episcopal rites were established by law but free civil or religious celebration worked itself in.

The intolerance exhibited by the state church in this particular was directly and indirectly an economic phenomenon. It was due to clerical eagerness for marriage fees and to the desire to fortify the prestige of the established church, that mossy prop of an outworn social order, destined to recede before the non-conformist churches of capitalism. Stalwart non-conformists or Catholics sharply fought or defiantly ignored its marriage requirements even at the risk of illegitimacy. How crassly material was the spirit that prompted

the ecclesiastical bigotry is evident from the frequently low character of the clergy of the establishment. The Episcopal church in Maryland was a disgrace and "Maryland parson" was an epithet of contempt. "They extorted marriage fees from the poor by breaking off in the middle of the service, and refusing to continue until they were paid." In Virginia there was a penalty for exacting more than the legal fee for marriage or banns. Ecclesiastical control of the sort described was a temporary anachronism. Save in Maryland, the civil ceremony was recognized, tho with restrictions. Marriage was already a civil contract.

Some idea of the strictness with which the law hedged the entrance to matrimony may be gained from the following excerpts from colonial laws and citations of colonial incidents.

In Maryland in 1638 a couple was married by license under bond that the man was not precontracted and that no lawful impediment existed. Many like bonds have been preserved. The 1640 act on marriage ordained that

No partie may solemnize marriage with any woman afore the banes three days before published in some chappell or other place of the county where public instnts are used to be notified or else afore oath made and caution entred in the county court that neither partie is apprentice or ward or precontracted or within the forbidden degrees of consanguinity or under govermt, of parents or tutors and certificate of such oath and caution taken from the judge or register of the court upon paine of fine and recompense to the parties aggrieved.

The act of 1658 enforced banns in all cases. In 1662 a new act was aimed against clandestine marriages. The option of governor's or lieutenant-general's license instead of banns is allowed in this act. One hundred