Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) SOME PHASES OF SEXUAL MORALITY AND CHURCH DISCIPLINE IN COLONIAL NEW ENGLAND. BY CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. [REPRINTED FROM THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY, JUNE, 1891.] CAMBRIDGE: JOHN WILSON AND SON. University Press. 1891. SOME PHASES OF SEXUAL MORALITY IN COLONIAL NEW ENGLAND. In the year 1883 I prepared a somewhat detailed sketch of the history of the North Precinct of the original town of Braintree, subsequently incorporated as Quincy, which was published and can now be found in the large volume entitled "History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts." In the preparation of that sketch I had at my command a quantity of material of more or less historical value,--including printed and manuscript records, letters, journals, traditions both oral and written, etc.,--bearing on social customs, and political and religious questions or conditions. The study of this material caused me to use in my sketch the following language:-- "That the earlier generations of Massachusetts were either more law-abiding or more self-restrained than the later, is a proposition which accords neither with tradition nor with the reason of things. The habits of those days were simpler than those of the present; they were also essentially grosser. The community was small; and it hardly needs to be said that where the eyes of all are upon each, the general scrutiny is a safeguard to morals. It is in cities, not in villages, that laxity is to be looked for." But "now and again, especially in the relations between the sexes, we get glimpses of incidents in the dim past which are as dark as they are suggestive. Some such are connected with Quincy.... The illegitimate child was more commonly met with in the last than in the present century, and bastardy cases furnished a class of business with which country lawyers seem to have been as familiar then as they are with liquor cases now."[1]