I have only further to say, in passing, that some of the other cases mentioned in this John Quincy record are not without a curious interest. For instance, August 24, 1722, John Veasey, "husbandman," is put under recognizance in the sum of £5 "for detaining his child from the public worship of God, said child being about eleven years old." On the same day John Belcher, "cordwainer," is put under a similar recognizance "for absenting himself from the public worship of God the winter past." Eleazer Veasey,--the Braintree Veaseys I will say in passing were members of the Church of England in Braintree, and not members of the Braintree church,--Eleazer Veasey is, on the 20th of September, 1717, fined five shillings to the use of the town poor for "uttering a profane curse." So also Christopher Dyer, "husbandman," "did utter one profane curse," to which charge he pleaded guilty, and, on the 17th of May, 1747, was fined four shillings for the use of the poor. In this case the costs were assessed at six shillings, making ten shillings as the total cost of an oath in Massachusetts at that time; but as Dyer was a "soldier of His Majesty's service," the court added that if the fine was not paid forthwith, he (Dyer) "be publickly set in the stocks or cage for the space of three hours." Returning to the subject of church discipline and public confessions of incontinence, it will be observed that in the case of the North Precinct Church of Braintree the great body of these confessions are recorded as being made during the Hancock pastorate, or between the years 1726 and 1744. This also, it will be remembered, was the period of what is known in New England history as "The Great Awakening," described in the first chapter of the recently published fifth volume of Dr. Palfrey's work. Some writers, while referring to what they call "the tide of immorality" which then and afterward "rolled," as they express it, over the land, so that "not even the bulwark of the church had been able to withstand" it,--these writers, themselves of course ministers of the church, have, for want of any more apparent cause, attributed the condition of affairs they deplored, but were compelled to admit, to the influence of the French wars, which, it will be remembered, broke out in 1744, and, with an intermission of six years (1749-1755), lasted until the conquest of Canada was completed in 1760. But it would be matter for curious inquiry whether both the condition of affairs referred to and the confessions made in public of sins privately committed were not traceable to the church itself rather than to the army,--whether they were not rather due to the spiritual than to the martial conditions of the time.