The laws of the other colonies differed only in details from those of Plymouth. In Massachusetts the first order of the general court on the subject was passed in 1639. The intention is to be thrice published, not at divine service on the sabbath, it may be noted, but in town-meeting or at "publike lecture" in "both the townes where the parties, or either of them, do ordinarily reside." If no public lecture is held in the town, then fourteen days' notice may be given in writing on "some poast standing in publike viewe" and used solely for this purpose.[422] The "poast" is to be provided by the town under penalty of ten shillings for default.[423] Later it became customary for the town clerk or his deputy to publish the banns on Sunday, "after the blessing to the evening exercise was pronounced;" and so in 1696-97 we find the town-meeting of Charlestown ordering that "publishments should be made 'on Lecture days or any other public times, and not restrained to Sabbath Days only.'"[424] Sometimes on petition the legislature granted to individuals special permission to marry.[425] Originally the registration of births, deaths, and marriages devolved upon the town clerk; but it seems to have been neglected by him. For in 1642 the general court laid this duty upon the clerk of the writs in each town, under penalty for default, requiring him to make annual return of all names registered to the recorder of the county court.[426] A similar report to the same officer is to be submitted each year by all magistrates or persons appointed to solemnize marriages; and the "new married man" shall likewise, within one month, bring in to the clerk of the writs a certificate of his marriage.[427] Under the Province laws the duties of recorder were again performed by the clerk of the township; and under severe penalty persons might not be joined in marriage without presenting a proper certificate of publication and satisfactory evidence of parental consent.[428] [Footnote 422: In the edition of the laws, 1660, notice is to be placed "upon some post of their Meeting-house door": WHITMORE, _Col. Laws of Mass._ (1660-72), 51, 52: _cf._ _ibid._ (1672-86), 101.] [Footnote 423: _Mass. Col. Rec._, I, 275; WHITMORE, _Col. Laws of Mass._ (1660-72), 51, 52; _ibid._ (1672-86), 101. The meeting-house on Sunday or lecture-day was a general clearing-house for news and gossip; and not the least inviting topics were supplied by the marriage notices. "There they read, as from an old newspaper, of an intention of marriage between persons known to everybody; and although the town clerk had stood up in the congregation and screamed it at the top of his voice, it was an endless subject of comment, especially if the woman had as publicly renounced the intention--as women sometimes did."--BLISS, _Colonial Times on Buzzard's Bay_, 77, 78.] [Footnote 424: EDES, in _Mem. Hist. Bost._, II, 315, and n. 2.]