Elizabeth Genovese

Paper 1, Question 5

The Puritan colonies in the seventeenth-century were formed by a group of devout Christians who sought to purify their practice of Christianity through a virtuous life style. Through their colonies in New England, the godly commonwealth, the Puritans attempted to enforce strict codes of conduct. One area of particular importance to the colonists was maintaining the sanctity of sexual acts. This was achieved by enforcing codes that stated that sexual intercourse was only to occur between a husband and wife within the context of a marriage to create a prosperous godly family. All other sexual acts were seen as sins, as dictated by the Bible, and were therefore punished accordingly (Bederman, “Background: Seventeenth-Century English Society and the Puritans”). However, Puritan sexual standards were mostly strictly enforced when the authorities believed that the deviant sexual behavior threatened the public morality.

The close communities in which the Puritans lived allowed unlawful sexual behaviors to be witnessed by neighbors, serving as symbols of flagrant defiance of Puritan sexual standards. The abundance of adultery cases brought before the courts demonstrated the Puritan’s lack of tolerance for disrespect of the family structure; these cases often occurred at seaports with the coming and going of strange sailors while husbands were away. Elizabeth Martin, the wife of a captain, was often witnessed having large parties with traveling sailors, where there would be “uncivilized songs”, “chambering and wantonising” and incidences where both Elizabeth and her daughters would “play the whore…upon the staircase” (Godbeer, “Sexual Revolution in Early America”, 23). Since these uncivilized acts were witnessed by neighbors, the adulterous behaviors were not private sexual transgressions kept within the household, but instead, public displays of the moral deviance, and therefore were reported and prosecuted.

Lewd public behavior was an outward sexual transgression that was also quickly prosecuted in Puritan colonies. From improper exposure of one’s genitalia in public, to “bawdy” behavior and infractions of the “rules of right speaking”, general vulgar behavior was a threat to society and the colonists attempted to expunge said actions through punishment. One example of an occurrence of lewd public behavior was Goodwife Bailey, who upon being reported for “filthy and unclean speeches” was immediately confronted with the courts (Godbeer, 26). These various actions were examples the moral corruption that the Puritans were striving to rid from their colony, and hence, strove to eliminate them before they could corrupt witnesses.

Unlike the lewd public acts, where the infractions took place in broad daylight, other sexual transgressions that were capable of polluting the moral code of the Puritans, such as fornication and premarital sex, where not necessarily witnessed, but the conception of a baby was a public symbol of such actions. As the practice of premarital sex became more common, the Puritans became increasingly preoccupied with uncovering all those who produced evidence of such a morally irreprehensible act. Between 1640 and 1685, over 150 couples in Essex County alone were convicted of premarital sex, while those who secretly preformed said act without producing offspring remained under the radar of the Puritan church members (Godbeer, 34). The most common method of determining if a infant was conceived before a couple was married was to calculate the approximate time of conception based on the date of the baby’s birth. The courts punished Stephen Johnson in 1701 because he “sinfully conversed with her who was now his wife, before she were so” (Godbeer, 34), while Elizabeth Denham was sent to court for having an infant “born within too few weeks after she was married” (Godbeer, 34). The extravagant nature by which the Puritan courts would seek out those who had engaged in premarital sex demonstrates how desperate they were to remove symbols of immoral sexual behavior.

Other, more egregious sexual deviances, such as bestiality, were also quickly brought to court in the Puritan colonies. Colonists who witnessed human intercourse with animals did not tolerate these unnatural sexual acts and immediately reported the events to authorities. In the 1640’s, most of the people who participated in bestiality were young, unmarried males (Murrin, “Things Fearful to Name”, 20). Thomas Granger, of the Plymouth Colony, was a teenage boy who was seen having sexual intercourse with a horse in an open field; during his examination in court, he had confessed to having sex with a variety of animals (Murrin, 21). As stated by William Bradford, the leader of Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Bible dictates that both the person and the animal involved in the sexual act must be put to death. In his discussion of Granger’s case, Bradford proclaims the colonies faithful execution of Biblical laws: “A very sade spectacle it was; for first the mare, and then the cowe, and the rest of the lesser catle, were kild before his face, according to the law, Levit: 20.15 and then he himselfe was executed.” (Murrin, 36) This execution of a young boy for an unnatural sexual offense, that did not cause harm to anyone else, demonstrated how stringently the Puritans enforced their harsh laws of sexual conduct.

In following the teachings of the Bible, the Puritans formulated strong civil reactions to outward sexual transgressions and attempted to eradicate all public forms of indecent sexual acts to eliminate predations on their moral code. Officials fought to eliminate the public manifestations of the sexual crimes that reminded their citizens of these morally repugnant acts, such as a child born out of premarital sex or a constant flow of strange men into a married woman’s house, in order to remove any temptation to follow suit. John Winthrop declared that these stringent punishments were created to stop the actions that were “corrupting or tempting others to doe the like” (Murrin, 17). While protecting their citizens from sexual evils, the Puritan leaders were also attempting to preserve the image of their godly community, which was being attacked by London in the late 1600s as a result of the numerous sexual offense cases being brought to court (Godbeer, 20). With great consistency, Bradford explained that the large number of cases were not due to an increased perversion in the colonies, but instead an increased assault on inappropriate sexual acts by the government to create a virtuous colony (Godbeer, 21). If this were the full truth, all sexual acts not supported by the moral code of the Puritans would have been equally pursued and punished, however, there were certain types of sexual transgressions that were often overlooked.

In comparison to other sexual improprieties, the Puritans were relatively accepting of sodomy and less likely to enforce a harsh punishment for those who were prosecuted for the sexual act. Typically, when colonial witnesses encountered a man attempting, or participating in, acts of sodomy, they were less concerned with reporting the offense to the court (Godbeer, 44). An example of the colonists’ passive attitude towards this “unnatural” sexual act is the case of Nicholas Sension (Murrin, 14). After settling into Windsor in 1640, Sension began to sodomize, and attempt to sodomize, a variety of young men until 1677, when he was finally brought to court. Over this thirty-seven year period, neither his victims nor witnesses reported these incidences, though his engagement in sodomy was known among his neighbors. The brother of one of his victims eventually brought charges up against Sension, in 1677(Godbeer, 46). While the Bible states that men who perform sodomy should be put to death (Murrin, 14), Sension was merely required to shorten the victim’s indenture and pay the servant for his abuse (Godbeer, 47). The lack of aggressiveness that both the colonists took towards reporting sodomy and the lighter sentencing of the courts indicated that sodomy, to the Puritans, was a forgivable sexual offense.

While the Bible, Leviticus 20:13, proclaims sodomy and bestiality as equally immoral actions (Murrin, 14), the punishment, death in both cases, was leniently enforced for sodomy, while strictly enforced for bestiality. It appears counterintuitive that the act of sodomy, identified by the Bible as such a morally heinous act as to warrant punishment by death, was easily overlooked, while individual colonists aggressively investigated premarital sex. Sension, a known sexual predator to young male servants, was merely given a fine for his behavior, while Granger, a young boy, was executed for his acts of bestiality. The important distinction between all other sexual offenses previously detailed and sodomy was that sodomy provided no outward symbol or projection of sexual deviance. If a man chose to engage in sodomy, nothing about his actions, short of the sexual act committed in the isolated room, seemed unnatural or out of the ordinary. If two men were to be placed in the same sleeping chambers, it would appear to be proper, as oppose to placing an unwed man and woman in the same bedroom. Therefore, to the outside, the events leading up to the sexual act were seemingly not deviant. Moreover, there were no physical remnants of the sexual act as well; unlike premarital sex, which could have lead to the conception of a child, sodomy did not produce a lasting symbol of the sexual transgression. Therefore, unlike all the other sexual acts that disregarded the sexual standards of the Puritans, sodomy did not manifest a public display of a sexual offense, and therefore did not corrupt the rest of society. Furthermore, it was only once the sodomy was taken to a point where social disturbance was inevitable that the offender was actually brought to court (Godbeer, 49), supporting this concept that social corruption was the main incentive to prosecute sexual offenders.

In pursuit of their goal of creating a godly commonwealth, the Puritans had to ensure that the morals and values presented in their religion were carried out in the actions of the people. The first step towards that goal was to create stringent laws. As stated by both Winthrop and Bradford, the colony could not allow the presence of moral transgressions, such as improper sexual acts, to persist and set examples of immorality and evil for their citizens to follow. Lewd public acts, adulterous behavior, premarital sex that resulted in the conception of a child, and bestiality were all sexual offenses that publicly portrayed, and endorsed, these immoral actions. As a result, the Puritan leaders attempted to suppress those actions by severely punishing those who performed such acts. In comparison, the sexual transgression of sodomy did not outwardly promote this sexual behavior. Since the act of sodomy was not a threat to the overall moral virtues of the Puritan colonies, the courts were less concerned with harshly punishing those involved, while searching out all other visible moral threats in society.

Works Cited

Bederman, Gail. “Background: Seventeenth-Century English Society and the Puritans”. HIST 30706: The History of Sex, Sexuality, and Gender in British North America and The U.S. to 1900. The University of Notre Dame. August 30, 2005.

Godbeer, Richard. Sexual Revolution in Early America. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2002.

Murrin, John. “Things Fearful to Name: Bestiality in Early America” American Sexual Histories. Ed. Elizabeth Reis. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers Inc., 2001.