But in order to substantiate this theory of an historical manifestation it remains to consider how generally the custom of "bundling" prevailed in New England, and to how late a day it continued. The accredited historians of New England, so far as I am acquainted with their writings, throw little light on this question. Mr. Elliott, for instance, in his chapter on the manners and customs of the New England people, contents himself with some pleasing generalities like the following, the correctness of which he would have found difficulty in maintaining:-- "With this exalted, even exaggerated, value of the individual entertained in New England, it was not possible that men or women entertaining it should yield themselves to corrupt or debasing practices. CHASTITY was, therefore, a cardinal virtue, and the abuse of it a crying sin, to be punished by law, and by the severe reproof of all good citizens."[20] According to this authority, therefore, as "bundling" was unquestionably both a "corrupt" and a "debasing practice," "it was not possible that men or women" of New England "should yield themselves" to it; and that ends the matter. Passing on from Mr. Elliott to another authority: in his recently published and very valuable "Economic and Social History of New England," Mr. Weeden has two references to "bundling." In one of them (p. 739) he speaks of it as "certainly an unpuritan custom" which was "extensively practised in Connecticut and Western Massachusetts," against which "Jonathan Edwards raised his powerful voice"; and again he later on (p. 864) alludes to it as "a curious custom which accorded little with the New England character," and which "lingered among the lower orders of people ... prevailing in Western Massachusetts as late as 1777." I am led to believe that the custom prevailed far more generally and to a much later date than these statements of Mr. Weeden would seem to indicate; that, indeed, it was continued even in eastern Massachusetts and the towns immediately about Boston until after the close of the Revolutionary troubles, and probably until the beginning of the present century. The Braintree church records throw no light on this portion of the subject; but the Groton church records show that not until 1803 was the practice discontinued of compelling a public confession before the whole congregation whenever a child was born in less than seven months after marriage. Turning then to Worthington's "History of Dedham" (p. 109),--a town only ten miles from Boston,--I find that the Rev. Mr. Haven, the pastor of the church there, alarmed at the number of cases of unlawful cohabitation, preached at least as late as 1781 "a long and memorable discourse," in which, with a courage deserving of unstinted praise, he dealt with "the growing sin" publicly from his pulpit, attributing "the frequent recurrence of the fault to the custom then prevalent of females