Fornication in Puritan New England: Crime, Court and Punishment

Why did Puritan colonies make fornication a crime?

Puritan colonies made fornication a crime because their founders saw no sharp line between sin and public offense, and they wrote their criminal law with the Bible open. The Puritans were English Protestants who wanted to purify the Church of England of practices they considered Catholic; beginning in 1630, as many as 20,000 of them left England, most for New England ^[3]. Encyclopaedia Britannica describes the movement as a reform current of the late 16th and 17th centuries, marked by "moral and religious earnestness" ^[4].

The Library of Congress notes that the New England colonies "have often been called 'Bible Commonwealths'" because Scripture guided so much of daily life ^[3]. Their criminal laws drew especially on the Old Testament, while many civil matters followed English common law ^[3]. Sexual conduct outside marriage therefore fell under the jurisdiction of magistrates, not only of ministers and congregations.

The Pilgrims reached Plymouth in 1620, a decade before the main Puritan migration to Massachusetts Bay; the Library of Congress describes the Puritans themselves as non-separating Congregationalists, who regarded the Church of England as a true church in need of deep reform ^[3]. The two colonies remained distinct until Plymouth lost its self-government in 1691 ^[1], but they shared the conviction that a godly community had to police the household, including what happened before a wedding.

Sentences in a sample of Plymouth Colony convictions, 1633-1643

Offense	Convictions	Penalties recorded
Fornication	19	9 whippings, 9 stocks, 2 fines, 1 bond for good behavior
Lewd, lascivious or wanton behavior	16	10 whippings, 2 stocks, 2 banishments, 2 burnings on the shoulder, 2 other (including whipping and wearing "AD")
Drunkenness	18	11 fines, 2 whippings, 2 stocks
Liquor violations	13	13 fines
All offenses in the sample	191	Fornication and lewd behavior: 35 convictions; drunkenness and liquor: 31

What did the laws of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay say?

Both colonies punished fornication, but their written codes differed. Plymouth's first code of laws, in 1636, listed fornication twice: once for intercourse before contract or marriage, and once together with other "uncleane carriages" left to the magistrates' discretion ^[2]. A June 1645 act set the penalty for fornication before or without a lawful contract at up to three days' imprisonment plus either a whipping or a fine of £10 per person; for a couple already contracted, meaning formally engaged, the fine fell to £5 each ^[2]. The act was carried into Plymouth's 1658 codification ^[2].

Massachusetts Bay's Body of Liberties, compiled by the minister Nathaniel Ward and adopted by the General Court in December 1641, took a different shape ^[5]. It contained a list of capital laws, each followed by biblical references, and the ninth made adultery with "a maried or espoused wife" a capital crime for both partners, citing Leviticus 20 and Deuteronomy 22 ^[5]. The same document contained no provision on fornication at all ^[5]; that offense was dealt with by later statutes and by the county courts.

The distinction mattered. In both colonies, fornication referred to intercourse between people who were not married, and it was punished by fines, whipping or shaming. Adultery, defined around a married woman, was classed among the gravest crimes, even if, as later sections show, the colonies rarely applied the full penalty.

How did Plymouth Colony courts punish fornication?

Plymouth Colony courts punished fornication mainly by whipping, the stocks and fines, sometimes combined with an order to support the child. A sample of 191 convictions from 1633 to 1643, compiled by the historian Powers and reported by the Plymouth Colony Archive Project, includes 19 convictions for fornication that produced 9 whippings, 9 sentences to the stocks, 2 fines and 1 bond for good behavior ^[1]. Several offenders received more than one penalty, which is why the sentences outnumber the convictions.

Penalties shifted over time. According to the historian Lisa Lauria, fines were rare before 1645, when offenders usually went to the stocks or the whipping post; after the 1645 act, fines and whipping became the common sentences, and the short prison terms written into the law seem to have been dropped or left unrecorded ^[2]. When a pregnancy followed, the man was expected either to marry the woman or to pay regular sums toward the child's upkeep ^[2].

Court records show how this worked in individual cases. Nathaniel Soule and his partner were both whipped at the post, and he was ordered to pay ten bushels of Indian corn toward the child's keep; in another case, a man and woman were whipped and the man was told to pay 18 pence a week for a year ^[2]. A servant named Jane Powell, by contrast, admitted fornication with another servant but was sent home unpunished after the court accepted that she had been persuaded ^[2].

Plymouth's courts were, on the whole, less severe than the letter of their laws. The archive project's legal survey notes that the colony carried out only one execution for a sex-related crime, the hanging of the teenage servant Thomas Graunger for bestiality in 1642 ^[1].

How common were fornication cases?

Fornication was one of the most frequently prosecuted offenses in Plymouth, roughly as common as drunkenness. In Powers's 1633-1643 sample, 35 of the 191 convictions concerned fornication or lewd behavior and 31 concerned drunkenness or liquor violations; together these categories made up 35% of all convictions, far more than theft or violence ^[1]. A later sample for 1660-1669, compiled by Parnes, counts 35 fornication convictions, 15 for lascivious carriage and 35 for drunkenness, out of 310 convictions in the decade ^[1].

Lauria's study of the whole colonial period finds 69 fornication cases presented between 1633 and 1691 ^[2]. Only four clearly involved couples during the period of contract, and the cases divide almost evenly between couples who later married and couples who never did ^[2]. Using town registers that she describes as of doubtful accuracy, she estimates that about 11% of marriages recorded between 1645 and 1686 involved premarital fornication ^[2].

Massachusetts Bay produced a larger body of cases. Else L. Hambleton's book Daughters of Eve (Routledge, 2004) analyzes fornication, bastardy and paternity cases heard by the courts of Essex County, Massachusetts, from 1640 to 1692, including a chapter on "pregnant brides" whose first child arrived too soon after the wedding ^[7]. Such couples could be prosecuted after the fact, because an early birth was itself evidence of intercourse before marriage.

How did punishments for adultery differ?

Adultery carried far heavier penalties on paper than fornication, although executions remained exceptional. Plymouth's 1636 code first listed adultery as an ordinary offense, then moved it among capital crimes with the qualifier "to be punished," and the colony never put anyone to death for it ^[1][2]. Its 1658 law instead ordered two whippings and required the offender to wear the cloth letters AD on the outer garment, with a further public whipping for anyone caught without them ^[2].

Plymouth's records show this kind of shaming before the 1658 law was written. On September 3, 1639, Mary Mendame was whipped at the cart's tail and ordered to wear a badge on her left sleeve, while her partner, a Native man named Tinsin, was whipped at the post with a halter around his neck ^[2]. On December 7, 1641, Thomas Bray and Anne Linceford were both whipped in Plymouth and in Yarmouth and both ordered to wear the letters "AD" ^[2]. The story of these letters, and of the novel they later inspired, is told in were scarlet letters real?.

Massachusetts Bay went further at least once. In February 1644 a warrant signed by Edward Winslow sent Mary Latham, accused of adultery with James Britton of Weymouth, to the governor of Massachusetts for trial; the papers survive among the Winthrop family papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society ^[6]. Winthrop's journal, which the Massachusetts Historical Society's edition cites for the case, records that both were condemned for adultery under the colony's capital law and executed. A provincial act of 1694 set a different scale: an hour on the gallows with a rope around the neck, up to 40 lashes and a capital A of cloth sewn on the outer clothing ^[9].

Did the courts treat men and women alike?

The courts did not treat men and women alike, although the direction of the imbalance varied by place and period. In Plymouth in the early 1640s, men convicted of fornication were typically whipped while women sat in the stocks or only watched ^[2]. After 1645 the main inequality, according to Lauria, was that often only one partner, usually the man, was named and punished ^[2]. In 1646, John Tompson was fined £5 for relations with his future wife after their contract, while she, liable under the same law, received no sentence ^[2].

The definition of adultery itself favored married men. Because the offense was defined around a married woman, a married man who had relations with a single woman was charged only with fornication, a double standard that Lauria, following the historian John Demos, points out ^[2]. Out-of-wedlock pregnancy also exposed women in a way men were not exposed: a birth made the offense visible.

Massachusetts and Connecticut records point the same way over the longer term. Hambleton concludes that in seventeenth-century Essex County women who bore children outside marriage were punished more severely than their male partners ^[7]. Cornelia Hughes Dayton's study of New Haven courts from 1639 to 1789 traces how women's presence in court declined from the mid-1600s to the Revolution, and devotes a chapter to what she calls the eighteenth-century double standard in cases of consensual sex ^[8].

What legacy did Puritan morals laws leave?

Puritan morals laws left a long legal tail: the offense of fornication stayed in the Massachusetts statute book for more than three centuries after the Bible Commonwealths ended. Dayton identifies the early eighteenth century as a turning point in New England's law, economy and ideas about gender, when Puritan principles weakened and English legal models gained ground ^[8]. The statutes themselves, however, survived into the state codes that followed independence.

Massachusetts formally repealed its fornication and adultery statutes only through chapter 155 of the Acts of 2018, approved on July 25, 2018 ^[10]. That history, from Bible Commonwealth to repeal, is traced in Massachusetts and fornication, and the situation in other states today is summarized in fornication laws still on the books.

The Puritan record also shaped an enduring image. The 1694 Massachusetts law requiring a letter A was later made famous by Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter (1850), whose depiction it follows closely, according to a Massachusetts trial court law library ^[9]. The court records summarized above suggest a more varied picture than the novel's: frequent prosecutions, mostly modest penalties, frequent marriages after the fact, and treatment that depended heavily on sex, status and the presence of a child.

Frequently asked questions

Did the Puritans execute people for adultery?

Rarely, but it happened. Massachusetts Bay's Body of Liberties of 1641 made adultery with a married woman a capital crime, and Mary Latham and James Britton were executed in 1644. Plymouth Colony listed adultery among capital crimes but never executed anyone for it, preferring whipping and the letters "AD."

Were married couples prosecuted for early births?

Yes. A child born too soon after the wedding was evidence of intercourse before marriage, and couples could be prosecuted after the fact. In Plymouth in 1646, John Tompson was fined £5 for relations with his wife after their contract but before the wedding, and historians have studied many such "pregnant brides" in Essex County, Massachusetts.

Did Puritan courts force couples to marry?

Not always, but marriage was a common outcome. In Plymouth, when a pregnancy followed, the man was expected either to marry the woman or to pay regular support for the child. About half of the colony's fornication cases involved couples who eventually married.

What is the difference between fornication and adultery in Puritan law?

Fornication meant intercourse between unmarried people, while adultery was defined around a married woman. A married man with a single woman was therefore charged only with fornication. Fornication brought fines, whipping or the stocks; adultery could bring death in Massachusetts Bay or whipping and the letters "AD" in Plymouth.

How many fornication cases did Plymouth Colony hear?

About 69 cases of fornication were presented to Plymouth courts between 1633 and 1691, according to the historian Lisa Lauria. A sample of the years 1633 to 1643 contains 19 convictions, and a sample of the 1660s contains 35. In the 1660s sample, fornication was as common as drunkenness.

What was a Bible Commonwealth?

A Bible Commonwealth is the name historians often give to the Puritan colonies of New England, because Scripture guided their laws and daily life. The Library of Congress notes that their criminal laws drew especially on the Old Testament, while many civil laws followed English common law.

When did Massachusetts stop treating fornication as a crime?

Massachusetts repealed its fornication statute in 2018. Chapter 155 of the Acts of 2018, approved on July 25, 2018, removed the offense along with adultery and old limits on contraception. The law had long gone unenforced, especially after the Supreme Court's decision in Lawrence v. Texas (2003).