"It is no ground for surprise that in the seventeenth century there were instances of criminal intimacy between white women and negroes. Many of the former had only recently arrived from England, and were, therefore, comparatively free from the race prejudice that was so likely to develop upon close association with the African for a great length of time. The class of white women who were required to work in the fields belonged to the lowest rank in point of character. Not having been born in Virginia and not having thus acquired from birth a repugnance to association with the Africans upon a footing of social equality, they yielded to the temptations of the situations in which they were placed. The offence, whether committed by a native or an imported white woman, was an act of personal degradation that was condemned by public sentiment with as much severity in the seventeenth century as at all subsequent periods...."[291] Near the populous centers such relationships were sure to meet with swift punishment; but in the more remote districts such a custom might exist for years and meant nothing less than profit to the master of the plantation; for the child of negro blood might easily be claimed as the slave son of a slave father. Bruce explains clearly the attitude of the better classes in Virginia toward this mixture of races: "A certain degree of liberty in the sexual relations of the female servants with the male, and even with their master, might have been expected, but there are numerous indications that the general sentiment of the Colony condemned it, and sought by appropriate legislation to restrain and prevent it." "...If a woman gave birth to a bastard, the sheriff as soon as he learned of the fact was required to arrest her, and whip her on the bare back until the blood came. Being turned over to her master, she was compelled to pay two thousand pounds of tobacco, or to remain in his employment two years after the termination of her indentures." "If the bastard child to which the female servant gave birth was the offspring of a negro father, she was whipped unless the usual fine was paid, and immediately upon the expiration of her term was sold by the wardens of the nearest church for a period of five years.... The child was bound out until his or her thirtieth year had been reached."[292] The determined effort to prevent any such unions between blacks and whites may be seen in the Virginia law of 1691 which declared that any white woman marrying a negro or mulatto, bond or free, should suffer perpetual banishment. But at no time in the South was adultery of any sort punished with such almost fiendish cruelty as in New England, except in one known instance when a Virginia woman was punished by being dragged through the water behind a swiftly moving boat.