7 Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 86; Howard, Matrimonial Institutions, II, 129.

8 Alan Macfarlane, The Family Life of Ralph Josselin (Cambridge, 1970), 31.

9 An example was Col. William Dudley’s unsuccessful courtship of Samuel Sewall’s daughter Judith: “September 26, 1719, Col. Wm. Dudley calls, and after other discourse, asked me [permission] to wait on my daughter Judith home, when ‘twas fit for her to come. I answered, It was reported he had applied to her and he said nothing to me … his waiting on her might give some Umbrage: I would speak with her first … October 13, 1719, Governor Dudley visits me in his Chariot; speaks to me in behalf of Colonel William Dudley, that I would give him leave he might visit my daughter Judith. I said ‘twas a weighty matter. I would consider of it &c.” On 12 May 1720, Judith married the Reverend William Cooper (The Diary of Samuel Sewall, ed. Milton Halsey Thomas (2 vols. New York, 1973), II, 929, 931, 948).
   Precisely the same rituals were kept by Puritan families in East Anglia. “Jonathan Wood-thorp of our town, a Tanner, asked my consent to come to my daughter Jane and had it, on this ground especially that he was a sober, hopeful man his estate about 500 pounds” (The Diary of Ralph Josselin, 1616-1683, ed. Alan Macfarlane (London, 1976), 551; 21 Jan. 1669-70; see also Howard, Matrimonial Institutions, II, 202).

10 Sewall, Diary, II, 937, 1 Jan. 1719/20.