be recorded against their childrens unlawful behavior in being married by Priests.

Daniel Sanbourn on behalf of the men's meeting in Chuckatuck signed on "the eight day of the 3 mo in the yeare 1701" a certificate of disownment against "Tho Duke" for "marrying one that was not of us and lickwise goeing to the hireling priest." There are other protests and references to disorderly marriage.

The North Carolina records contain several instances of the control exercised by the Friends over the marriage of their members. In this colony also, Friends gave two notices of intended marriage and we find note of two men appointed "to enquire into his life and conversation and clearness in respect of marriage." In one locality a man's not having paid his debts would lead Quakers to refuse his request of marriage.

In Virginia there was to be no marriage of servants without certificate of master's consent.

Servants procuring ymselves to be married wthout consent of their Masters shall serve a year and if any being free shall secretly marry wth a servant he or she shall pay ye mr. of ye Servt 1500 lb. tobo, or a years service and ye Servt shall serve ye whole time and a year after.141

In Maryland free persons and servants were prohibited from marrying without the express approval of master or mistress. The General Assembly of 1777 passed an act prohibiting ministers, under penalty of fifty pounds, from marrying a free person and a servant without consent of master or mistress.

A North Carolina statute forbade any one, under penalty of five pounds to be paid to the master, to marry servants without the written consent of the master. All

141 Cooke. Virginia, 122-123; Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. x, "Abridgement of Laws of Virginia, 1694," 145-146.

servants so married were to serve one year extra. Probably many masters used their power to prevent the marriage of servant women. This embargo must have increased the number of unlawful unions. Baptists seem to have considered it a hardship. Just before the Revolution the Kehukee Association declared marriages not made according to law to be binding before God and that it was not lawful to fellowship a member that broke the marriage of servants.

XVI. WOMAN'S PLACE IN THE COLONIAL SOUTH

Southern "chivalry" does not date back to the beginnings of the South. It took time for the softening influences of the genial climate and the feudalizing trend of the broad expanse to prevail. Seventeenth century Virginia was bourgeois rather than knightly. Like their New England compeers, the founders of the Old Dominion were prosaic and practical. The economic interest dominated and left little room for sentiment. Women fared like contemporary English women of the middle class. Their lot was domestic, commonplace, subordinate. The early Virginians prepared the ducking stool for gossiping women. At an early day Betsey Tucker was ducked for making her husband's house and the neighborhood uncomfortable by her violent tongue. In 1662 the Assembly passed an act to the effect that wives that brought judgment on their husbands for slander should be punished by ducking. Bacon captured wives of loyalists and notified their husbands, who were with the governor, that he intended to place the ladies in front of his men in the line of battle. This was no empty threat and the "Apron Brigade" saved him from the fire of the governor's guns. The man that was thus guilty (as Colonel Ludwell put it) of "ravishing of women from their homes and hurrying them about the country in their rude camps" was a wealthy planter. Nor was His Excellency more chivalrous. Governor Berkeley spurned with vile insult

a woman begging for her husband's pardon for his part in the insurrection. We find record also of a rude insult to a lady of a leading family from a Virginia colonel, member of another leading family.

Some little feeling for womanhood is indeed manifested in the case of Grace Sherwood who in 1706 on suspicion of witchcraft was examined by a jury of women who reported her "neither like them, nor any other woman they knew of." She was fortunate in not coming under the Massachusetts law authorizing examination by a male "witch pricker" but she was ducked as a suspected witch. On the whole her experience is scarcely an exhibit of chivalry."

The accounts that Colonel Byrd gives of his visits to Virginia homes show sufficiently the attitude toward women in the middle of the eighteenth century. "We supped about nine and then prattled with the ladies." "Our conversation with the ladies was like whip-syllabub, very pretty but nothing in it." He jokes rather coarsely about Miss Thekky's lamentable maiden state and refers to Mrs. Chiswell as "one of those absolute rarities, a very good old woman. Another man wrote of the Virginia women:

Most of the women are quite pretty and insinuating in their manner if they find you so. When you ask them if they would like to have husbands they reply with a good grace that it is just what they desire.

A young Virginia lady writes:

Hannah and myself were going to take a long walk this evening but were prevented by the two horrid mortals Mr. Pinkard and Mr. Washington, who siezed and kissed me a dozen times in spite of all the resistance I could make. They really think, now they are married, they are prevaliged to do anything.

142 See Wertenbaker, Patrician and Plebeian in Virginia, 82-87; Forrest, Historical and Descriptive Sketches of Norfolk, Virginia, 464-465.

While we were eating the apple-pye in bed - God bless you, making a great noise-in came Mr. Washington dressed in Hannah's short gown and peticoat, and seazed me and kissed me twenty times in spite of all the resistance I could make; and then Cousin Molly.

Evidently women had reached by this time the status of toys.

It was out of such perspectives as those detailed that "chivalry" arose. By the time of the Revolution there was sufficient recrudescence of feudalism to cause an atavic reversion to chivalric standards.

The Virginia gentleman [says Wertenbaker] taught by the experience of many years, was beginning to understand aright the reverence due the nobleness, the purity, the gentleness of woman. He was learning to accord to his wife the unstinted and sincere homage that her character deserved.

But as we trace the later history of sex morals in the South it will become glaringly apparent what a veneered mockery was this boasted southern chivalry.

The domestic life of women on the old plantations must have been rather monotonous. According to travelers' descriptions they did not share largely in the diversions of the men. The subordination of woman is illustrated in various ways. Her husband was responsible for her behavior. Thus in a Virginia witch case the husband was under bond on his wife's account and upon her acquittal the bond was cancelled. The minutes of the council at Wilmington, North Carolina, August 31, 1753 contain the following:

Read the petition of Wm. Barns setting forth that his wife having during his absence retailed liquors contrary to law a bill of indictment had been found against him in the county court of New Hanover and that he being poor as well as innocent of the said crime prayed that a nolle prosequi might be entered in his behalf. enter a nolle prosequi.

. Attorney general was ordered to