Dale's code declared absence from Sunday services a capital offense. One guilty of blasphemy a second time, was sentenced to have a bodkin thrust through his tongue. A Mr. Barnes, of Bermuda Hundred, having uttered a detracting speech against a worthy gentleman in Dale's time, was condemned to have his tongue run through with an awl, to pass through a guard of forty men, and to be butted by every one of them, and at the head of the troop, knocked down, and footed out of the fort. A woman found guilty as a common scold, was sentenced to be ducked three times from a ship in the James River, and one mild statute declared that any person speaking disgraceful words of any person in the colony, should be tied, hand and foot together, upon the ground, every night for the space of one month. It must be said in excuse for the severities of Dale that he had a turbulent mob to discipline. He himself describes them as gathered in riotous or infected places, persons "so profane, of so riotous and treasonable intendments, that in a parcel of three hundred, not many gave testimony beside their name, that they were Christians." Another point to be remembered in defence of this iron soldier, is that all punishments in those days were such as would seem to us cruel and unwarrantable in proportion to the offence. The gallows in London was never idle. Almost every crime was capital. I read in the story of the Virginia adventurers in the Somer Iles of a desperate fellow who, "being to be arraigned for stealing a Turky, rather than he would endure his triall, secretly conveighed himself to sea in a little boat, and never since was heard of." I feel very confident that this poor "Turky"-stealer would never have tempted those stormy waters in a skiff, had he not known full well that a worse fate than drowning awaited him, if he stayed to stand his trial. The laws introduced by the House of Burgesses were strict enough, and their punishments sufficiently severe. The statutes enacted against "idlenesse" were so salutary that they would soon have exterminated such a social pest as the modern tramp. The law went even further than forbidding idleness, and undertook to discipline those guilty of any neglect of duty. Thomas Garnett, who was accused by his master of wanton and profligate conduct, "and extreame neglect of his businesse" was condemned "to stand fower dayes with his eares nayled to the Pillory, and that he, every of those fower days, should be publiquely whipped." The humiliation of the criminal was the special end and aim of the punishment. Richard Buckland, for writing a slanderous song concerning Ann Smith, was ordered to stand at the church-door during service with a paper round his hat, inscribed "_Inimicus Libellus_," and afterward to ask forgiveness of God, and also in particular of the defamed Ann Smith. Two convicted sinners were sentenced to stand in church with white sheets round their shoulders and white wands in their hands.