No prescribed marriage ritual existed. The intention of the persons entering into the covenant might be expressed in any fitting words.[407] In the early period weddings were usually celebrated quietly in the home of the bride. But it must not be understood that all festivity was for long rigorously proscribed. Soon feasting was added to prayer and the singing of psalms.[408] A sumptuary law of 1637, forbidding the sale of buns and cakes in the markets, victualling houses, and elsewhere, carefully makes an exception of "such cakes as shalbee made for any buriall, or marriage, or such like speciall occation."[409] The ancient practice of our teutonic ancestors of "bedding" the newly married pair was maintained in some quarters. Judge Sewall had that experience when he took his second wife.[410] "In Marblehead bridesmaids and groomsmen put the wedded couple to bed;" and we are told that "along the New Hampshire and upper Massachusetts coast, the groom was led to the bridal chamber clad in a brocaded night-gown. This may have occasionally taken place among the gentry," comments Mrs. Earle, "but I fancy brocaded night-gowns were not common wear among New England country folk."[411] Another "survival" was the sham "bride-stealing" which was long kept up in the Connecticut valley. "The last bride stolen in Hadley was Mrs. Job Marsh, in the year 1783;" and to this day "in certain localities in Rhode Island, the young men of the neighborhood invade the bridal chamber and pull the bride downstairs, and even out-of-doors, thus forcing the husband to follow to her rescue. If the room or house-door be locked against this invasion, the rough visitors break the lock."[412] Furthermore, numerous instances of "smock marriages" in New England are recorded. Here the English superstition elsewhere mentioned[413] took the special form that "if the bride were married 'in her shift on the king's highway,' a creditor could follow her person no farther in pursuit of his debt."[414] [Footnote 407: See GILMAN, _The Story of Boston_, 177, 178, for an account of the marriage ceremony in the time of the Mathers.] [Footnote 408: LODGE, _Short History_, 462.] [Footnote 409: _Mass. Col. Rec._, I. 214; _cf._ ATWATER, _Hist. of the Col. of New Haven_, 363; BAILEY, _Hist. Sketches of Andover_, 74, 75; WEEDEN, _Ecc. and Soc. Hist. of N. E._, I, 113.] [Footnote 410: SEWALL, _Diary_, in 5 _Mass. Hist. Coll._, VII, 233.] [Footnote 411: EARLE, _Customs and Fashions_, 73, 74.]