In Plymouth the death penalty for adultery seems never to have been established.[519] Instead, the "scarlet letter," a punishment even more terrible to bear, was there adopted as a permanent badge earlier than in any other colony; while in England it appears never to have been so employed for any crime.[520] So far as known, the oldest typical case of bearing such a "stigma" continuously for adultery occurred in 1639. In that year a woman was sentenced to be "whipt at a cart tayle" through the streets, and to "weare a badge vpon her left sleeue during her aboad" within the government. If found at any time abroad without the badge, she was to be "burned in the face w^{th} a hott iron."[521] Two years later a man and a woman for the same offense were severely whipped "at the publik post" and condemned while in the colony to wear the letters _AD_ "vpon the outeside of their vppermost garment, in the most emenent place thereof."[522] So the custom was already developed in judicial practice when the oldest statute providing for the "scarlet letter" appeared in 1658. It was then enacted "that whosoeuer shall comitt Adultery shalbee seuerly punished by whiping two seuerall times; viz: once whiles the Court is in being att which they are convicted of the fact and 2^{cond} time as the Court shall order; and likewise to weare two Capital letters ziz; AD cut out in cloth and sewed on theire vpermost Garments on theire arme or backe; and if at any time they shalbee taken without the said letters whiles they are in the Gou^rment soe worn to bee forth with taken and publickly whipt."[523] [Footnote 519: But the law is not entirely clear: see _Plym. Col. Rec._, XI, 12; and the comments of DAVIS, _The Law of Adultery_, 16.]