6 Amy Buchbinder, “Unlawful Familiarity in Ipswich,” (paper, Brandeis, 26 Nov. 1986); the case appears in Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, V, 143-46 (1672). There was, however, strong reluctance to impose capital punishment for adultery. In Connecticut, Governor John Winthrop, Jr., refused to approve a death sentence imposed on Hannah Hackleton after she had freely confessed to adultery. The magistrates refused to approve his decision for a year, while Hannah languished in a Connecticut jail. Finally her sentence was commuted to a whipping, and the law was changed so that adultery ceased to be a capital crime in Connecticut. In Massachusetts, nobody was sentenced to death for this offense after 1644, but many were punished by banishment, imprisonment, whippings and fines. See John Murrin, “Trial by Jury in Seventeenth-Century New England,” in David D. Hall, John Murrin and Thad Tate, eds., Saints and Revolutionaries (New York, 1984), 190-93.

7 Sheri Keller, “Adultery and Fornication in Massachusetts and Maryland” (paper, Brandeis, 1987); the gender ratio of punishments for fornication changed through time. In the first generation most proceedings were against men. By the end of the 17th century the proportion was nearly even.