[Footnote 544: This case is in _MSS. Records of the Superior Court of Judicature_ (1740-42), fol. 264. From the Suffolk Files (360-66, 557) DAVIS, _The Law of Adultery_, 13, 14, quotes the warrant of the sheriff for the execution; and also a notice of the case from the _Boston Weekly News-Letter_ of Thursday, Feb. 10, 1743, stating that the daughter Elizabeth, with whom the crime was committed, had absconded.] [Footnote 545: The five cases are as follows: (1) Salem, Oct. 28, 1729: Peter Harding, tailor, for having carnal knowledge with his daughter; gallows an hour, thirty-nine stripes, and capital _I_; _MSS. Records of the Superior Court of Judicature_ (1725-30), fol. 274. (2) Worcester, Sept. 19, 1752: Jonathan Fairbanks, husbandman, and Sarah Armstrong, his wife's daughter; Jonathan sentenced as above, except twenty stripes: _ibid._ (1752-53), fol. 181. (3) Springfield, Sept. 24, 1754: Joseph Severance and Eunice Classon, his wife's sister; Joseph sentenced as above, except thirty stripes. (4) Eunice, _particeps criminis_ in the preceding case, receives the same sentence, except twenty stripes: _ibid._ (1755-56), fol. 341. (5) Cambridge, Aug. 7, 1759: Judah Clark and Huldah Dudley, his wife's daughter; Huldah sentenced as above, except thirty stripes: _ibid._ (1757-59), 655.] The New England Puritans were, of course, very serious in their efforts to check sexual immorality. Their laws are characteristic of the age. As yet small progress had been made in enlightened theories of crime and its punishment. Besides they were steeped to the core in Hebraism. More or less as a religious duty they accepted and re-enacted the harsh precepts of the primitive Jewish code. It is not a little curious, however, to see them preserving an ancient English usage, almost extinct in the mother-country--in some instances regulating it by statute--which "thwarted their endeavors for complete propriety."[546] This was the custom of pre-contract, contraction, or betrothal, which everywhere in New England was celebrated with due solemnity. Such was the case in Massachusetts.[547] By the Connecticut statute, as already noted, the "contract" was carefully distinguished from the "covenant;" and because many persons entangle themselves by rash and inconsiderate promises for their future joining in marriage, the act of 1640 requires eight days' public notice of the betrothal, after which a second period of eight days must elapse before the covenant is sealed.[548] The pre-contract was in use also in New Hampshire[549] and Plymouth. In the latter jurisdiction the "couple--having the consent of the parents or guardians, in the case of minors--made before two witnesses a solemn promise of marriage in due time, the ceremony having the formality of the magisterial weddings then in vogue."[550] [Footnote 546: GOODWIN, _Pilgrim Republic_, 599, 600.]