Less significant laws reached out to regulate the personal life of the people: a talebearer was liable to penalty; a liar, a drunkard, a Sabbath-breaker, a profane man might be whipped, branded, imprisoned, or put in the stocks. It cost Nehemiah Besse five shillings to “drink tobacco at the meeting-house in Sandwich on the Lord’s day.” For the man taken in adultery there was a heavy fine and whipping; the woman must wear her “scarlet letter,” and for any evasion the device should be “burned in her face.” And to curb the spirit of “divers persons, unfit for marriage, both in regard to their years and also their weak estate,” it was decreed that “if any man make motion of marriage to any man’s daughter or maid without first obtaining leave of her parents, guardian or master, he shall be punished by fine not exceeding five pounds, or by corporal punishment, or both at the discretion of the court.” As a sequence, it is written that a Barnstable youth was placed under bonds “not to attempt to gain the affections” of Elizabeth, daughter of Governor Prince. In Eastham a man was mulcted a pound for lying about a whale; elsewhere one paid five pounds for pretending to have a cure for scurvy. Men were had up for profiteering when beer was sold at two shillings a quart which was worth one, and boots and spurs which cost but ten shillings were sold for fifteen. Certain leading citizens were licensed to “draw wine”: Thomas Lumbert at Barnstable, and Henry Cobb; Anthony Thacher at Yarmouth; at Sandwich Mr. Bodfish, and “when he is without, it shall be lawful for William Newlands to sell wine to persons for their need.” Constructive work was done in the way of building roads and bridges, for which Plymouth was willing the towns should pay; and a committee of the four Cape towns was appointed to draw therefrom, for such funds, “the oil of the country.” Representative government in the growing colony was practically coincident with the incorporation of the Cape towns, which sent representatives to the General Court and had local tribunals to settle disputes not “exceeding twenty shillings.”