From Religious to Secular Justice: The Transformation of Legal Treatment of Sexual Misconduct in Colonial Massachusetts
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Due to the emphasis on marriage and procreation in Puritan theology, sexual misconduct became not only a private matter but also a legal and moral concern throughout the history of colonial Massachusetts. As early as 1648, The Massachusetts Body of Lawes and Libertyes clearly stated the legal regulation on fornication, and legal cases in the mid-seventeenth century showed that women and men were both held accountable for sexual misconduct. However, the legal treatment of sexual misconduct had shifted by the eighteenth century. In the book Regulating Passion: Sexuality and Patriarchal Rule in Massachusetts, historian Kelly Ryan examined the court record in eighteenth-century colonial Massachusetts. Starting in the 1730s, the number of men on trial for fornication declined, and in the 1750s, the governments of several counties thoroughly terminated the criminal liability of men for nonmarital fornication. Specific cases of sexual misconduct reveal how legal institutions redefined and investigated sexual deviance, reflecting broader transformations of cultural and ideological priorities in colonial Massachusetts. This paper will use legal cases and court statistics to trace how evolving gender ideologies reshaped the legal regulation of sexual misconduct in colonial and early republic Massachusetts. This essay argues that the shift from Puritan communal beliefs to patriarchal Protestant values and the rise of patriarchal social norms led Massachusetts legal authorities to reframe sexual regulation in ways that disproportionately held women accountable.
In early colonial Massachusetts, morality was shaped entirely by Puritan religious belief. In English Puritan scriptures and writings, marriage is an essential element of social stability. The Second Prayer Book of Edward VI states that the missions of marriage are procreation of children, remedy for fornication, and shaping a stable, mutual society. Such conceptualization and emphasis on marriage created a “marital monopoly on sex,” where sexual activities were only permitted within the bounds of a legitimate, monogamous marriage. Therefore, community leaders and legal authorities passed laws to punish sex outside of marriage.The Massachusetts Body of Lawes and Libertyes, a law rooted in Puritan belief, contains statutes regarding fornication and adultery. “Any man [who] commit Fornication with any single woman” would be punished by fine or corporal punishment, and “any person [who] commit ADULTERIE with a married, or espoused wife” should be punished by death. The hierarchy of patriarchal society made people more likely to condemn women for moral deviances, but men and women were both held accountable for premarital and nonmarital sex under the legal statute. The case of the adultery of Mary Latham can illustrate this legal principle.
The case of Mary Latham was recorded by John Winthrop, the first governor of the Massachusetts colony, in his journal. He not only documents the legal procedure and execution of the criminals but also the life and love experiences of Mary Latham as a young woman living in Colonial Massachusetts. Mary appeared to be a “proper young woman” at the age of eighteen. However, after being rejected by a man she loved, Mary impulsively married an older man she did not care for. Unhappy in her marriage, Mary began to commit adultery with young men who “solicited her chastity,” and she started to abuse her husband, “setting a knife to his breast and threatening to kill him” and vowing to make him “wear horns as big as a bull.” Mary was eventually arrested, along with James Britton, a professor from England, following a drunken gathering where their adultery came to light. In the trial, despite some magistrates doubting the evidence, the jury declared her guilty, and Mary ultimately confessed and implicated her other sexual partners. Eventually, both Mary and James were executed.
As the highest civil authority and a leading moral arbiter in seventeenth-century Massachusetts, Governor John Winthrop’s account is an authoritative legal narrative. In his journal, Winthrop simply passes through the legal procedure and focuses instead on the confession of the two sinners. He states that “the woman proved very penitent and had deep apprehension of the foulness of her sin.” In contrast, James Britton was “loath to die and petitioned the general court for his life.” The emphasis on penitential confession shows that spiritual contrition was treated as the way of establishing guilt in cases of sexual misconduct. Also, it reflects religion as one of the most important legal authorities in seventeenth-century Massachusetts. Moreover, Winthrop underscores Mary Latham’s status as a married woman by accounting for her life experience to reinforce the “marital monopoly on sex,” but he omits any reference to James Britton’s marital bond. Even in this situation, both the “adulterer” and the “adulteresse” were subjected to capital punishment. In this way, the case affirms that marriage was deemed the sole lawful context for sexual activity and the violation of that covenant incurred equal legal and moral censure for men and women alike.
However, as Massachusetts society evolved, shifting demographics and increasing legal formalization began to change the ways in which cases of sexual misconduct were handled, leading to new forms of gendered inequity within the legal system. During the transition from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century, a growing influx of newcomers to the Massachusetts Colony and the rising number of civil disputes led to a litigation explosion. Learned from English law practice, legal proceedings became more formal and Anglicized compared to the trial of Mary Latham, where she confessed, and the community decided on her execution. One of the most important gendered limitations of this transforming legal structure was that only men could initiate prosecution and become legal representatives. As a result, although the colonial laws still nominally held men and women accountable for sex outside of marriage, the evolving legal framework started to bar women from initiating legal action or serving as their advocates in the court. Thus, it created an emerging imbalance in the legal treatment of sexual misconduct. Women who were victims of sexual misconduct or assault were often unable to present a compelling legal case for pregnancies that occurred outside of marriage. Such a disadvantage of women is clearly illustrated in the Declaration of the Case by Deborah Proctor, a widowed mother seeking justice for her daughter, who was a victim of a sex crime.
Deborah Proctor wrote the declaration for a paternity case. In 1705, Martha Proctor, an unmarried woman living on Hog Island in Essex County, became pregnant. The rumors circulated in the community that her cousin, Thomas Choat, was the father, but Martha refused to name the father during childbirth. Under the law of Massachusetts Bay, a woman who became pregnant out of wedlock had to make a statement to a justice and secure surety to return for trial post-birth. Therefore, Martha’s mother, Deborah Proctor, submitted a detailed written declaration to the Essex County justices to explain the circumstances leading to her daughter’s pregnancy. According to Deborah’s account, Thomas Choat visited Martha frequently while her mother was away and eventually engaged in sexual activity with her. Choat approached Martha in her bed while she was alone and vulnerable, and her subsequent silence about the incident cast doubt on whether the encounter was consensual. Besides detailing the reason for Martha’s pregnancy, Deborah also describes her attempts to address the extensive persecution suffered by her family since Martha’s conception. After people in the community discovered that Martha was pregnant out of wedlock, they condemned and persecuted her family by criticizing her “misbehavior.” The declaration was so detailed that Abby Chandler comments that it “survives today as the most extensive description of a sexual crime in colonial Essex County.”
However, the legal procedure hindered Deborah’s effort to seek justice for her daughter. Deborah Proctor’s position as a widow and a female head of household “put certain limitations on her legal options.” As a woman, she could not initiate formal prosecution, and Martha refused to name the father during childbirth, leaving no midwife testimony to validate the paternity. As a result, Deborah could only let her brother Joseph Proctor to fulfill this procedural requirement. Moreover, depositions played a central role in disputed paternity trials by providing justices with necessary details, but the poor financial status restricted Deborah from generating depositions from others. In contrast, Thomas Choat, leveraging his social status and financial resources, produced character witnesses and denied involvement. Although Deborah Proctor’s declaration is emotionally compelling and rich in detail, it could not substitute for the legal weight of male testimony. The court ultimately acquitted Choat because of the lack of a direct accusation from Martha and the absence of customary midwife testimony.
The paternity case of Martha Proctor and the adultery case of Mary Latham both reflect the enduring moral expectation of “marital monopoly on sex” in colonial Massachusetts. In both of the cases, the community authorities and members condemned people for sexual misconduct. John Winthrop focuses on the spiritual contrition of Mary Latham and James Britton while documenting their sins, and Martha Proctor’s pregnancy outside of marriage was seen by the community not only as a personal deviance but also as a moral blemish on her entire household. However, male involvement was gradually obscured in the legal narratives regarding sexual misconduct. Despite the ambiguity about Martha’s sexual consent, the community’s harsh judgment that Deborah described reveals that female sexual behavior was subject to scrutiny as always, but the rumored father, Thomas Choat, was not bothered by public censure. Therefore, the public attitudes towards sexual misconduct in the case of Martha Proctor reveal a shift, in that condemnation had come to focus more heavily on women.
Moreover, the transformation of legal procedure, particularly in terms of evidence and testimonial requirements, started to disproportionately penalize women by barring them from initiating legal action or serving as their own advocates in the court. In the case of Mary Latham, she was her own legal representative, and she was able to confess and implicate James Britton in court. On the contrary, Martha Proctor was silenced in legal proceedings, and the powerful declaration from her mother was ignored by the court as evidence. However, men like Thomas Choat, equipped with wealth and legal access, could navigate the system to their advantage. Thus, the Proctor case reveals not only the gendered limitations of colonial justice but also the tension between inherited moral norms and the exclusionary evolution of legal practice in early eighteenth-century New England.
As the eighteenth century progressed, a rising new cultural norm in the Massachusetts colony inspired a new legal framework for regulating female sexual behaviors. Historian Richard Godbeer asserted that a “sexual revolution” occurred among young women in this period. It is characterized by rising numbers of premarital sex, unmarried women, a youth culture, and the value of sentimentalism in marriage. These radical ideas about female sexuality challenged the wealthy white men’s leadership and the patriarchal norms of colonial society. However, as a self-reflecting society that was committed to religious purification of people’s sexuality, Massachusetts responded to the challenges by imposing more severe regulations on deviant sexual behaviors from the altars and judges’ benches. Prosecuting sexual misconduct has gone from being a legal tool for reinforcing moral standards in the community to a tool for disciplining women’s sexuality. Judicial prosecution and laws regarding adultery, fornication, and infanticide mainly targeted women and upheld the idea that women’s sexuality should be confined to the marriage bed. In contrast, the sexual behaviors of men were treated more leniently, and men were often shielded from comparable scrutiny or punishment.
This new legal standard can be reflected in the fact that men were gradually exempted from fornication prosecution. During the 1740s and 1750s in Worcester, Middlesex, Suffolk, and Plymouth counties, between 50% and 93% of men prosecuted for fornication were charged specifically with premarital sex, rather than nonmarital encounters. By the end of the 1750s, county governments had effectively ceased prosecuting men altogether for both premarital and nonmarital fornication. The declining number of men in nonmarital fornication trials signals a growing reluctance to hold men legally accountable for casual sexual behavior. On the other hand, the data for women is completely different. By the 1740s, nonmarital fornication made up between 63% and 97% of all fornication prosecutions involving women. By the 1750s, women accounted for 100% of nonmarital fornication cases. These patterns demonstrate that legal regulation of casual sexual encounters became increasingly gendered, with the burden of moral discipline falling exclusively on women.
The disparity in prosecution patterns reveals a shift in the legal and social regulation of sexuality in colonial Massachusetts, as the court was using the law to redefine acceptable female sexuality. By the 1750s, women made up 100% of nonmarital fornication prosecutions, while men were increasingly spared legal consequences. That means the legal authorities curtailed women’s sexual autonomy to reinforce patriarchal authority under the guise of the “marital monopoly on sex” principle. The sharp decline of men in fornication trials reflected an emerging anxiety about female sexuality in the changing colonial society. Therefore, although the religiosity of the Massachusetts colony was still entrenched, the colony’s commitment to communal morality was not consistent. An example of this dynamic is a sermon preached by Reverend Thomas Foxcroft about the infanticide case of Rebekah Chamblit.
In 1733, a priest named Reverend Thomas Foxcroft delivered a sermon titled “A Lesson of Caution TO YOUNG SINNERS” just four days before Rebekah Chamblit’s execution in Boston. Foxcroft claimed that Chamblit killed her baby when it was just born. Although she pleaded not guilty and claimed her child was stillborn, the jury convicted her of murdering her illegitimate child immediately after birth. In his sermon, Foxcroft urged Chamblit to repent, saying she must “beg Pardon of God” and consider herself as “a slave to sin and lust.” He compared her to biblical figures such as Mary Magdalene and Rahab “the Harlot,” urging her to seek salvation through repentance. Foxcroft’s sermon was not just a condemnation of Chamblit’s behavior but also a “moral lesson” for his congregation. “O that this may be the blessed Effect,” he prayed after quoting Ezekiel 23:48, where God declares: “Thus will I cause Lewdness to cease out of the land, that all Women may be taught not to do after your Lewdness.” He equated Chamblit with biblical women who were punished for their lust and lewdness, warning the “Daughters of Zion” to reform their behavior and adhere to the path of piety and chastity. Notably, Foxcroft made no mention of the man involved in the conception of the child, placing the full weight of moral and criminal responsibility on Chamblit.
The infanticide case of Rebekah Chamblit reveals the developments in the evolving legal framework and cultural landscape regarding sexual misconduct in colonial Massachusetts. The court ultimately executed Chamblit for infanticide, which is the highest sexual misconduct crime by definition. Her situation exemplifies how the focus of legal prosecution had shifted from punishing mutual transgression to regulating the outcomes of female sexuality, which is the childbirth outside of marriage. Unlike prosecutions for fornication and adultery, which often relied on testimony and lacked concrete evidence, prosecuting infanticide was comparatively easier, as the existence of a child born out of wedlock served as tangible evidence. The prosecution of the case indicates that the changing focus created an additional imbalance. Not only were women more vulnerable in the prosecutions of the sexual crimes that were supposed to be imposed equally on men and women, but the highest crime is exclusive to women.
Moreover, this focus aligned with religious institutions that continued to demand the purification of sexuality through marriage. The point of view of this primary source is from a clergyman. Ministers like Foxcroft frame sexual sin as a personal and public moral failing to be corrected through repentance and punishment, as always. However, the complete erasure of the male partner from both the sermon and the judicial proceedings reflects a legal culture that increasingly exonerated men from fornication charges, as statistical trends by the 1740s and 1750s had already begun to show. His silence also mirrors the growing cultural anxiety about female sexuality in colonial society. Foxcroft’s moralization of Chamblit’s actions, such as his invocation of biblical harlots and his plea for her to repent, reflects the fear that traditional patriarchal controls over women documented in Puritan scripture were weakening. Compared to earlier cases like that of Martha Proctor, where the alleged male perpetrator was at least subjected to legal scrutiny, Chamblit’s case marks a shift in which women alone bore the symbolic and legal burden of proof of transgression.
The transformation of legal responses to sexual misconduct in colonial Massachusetts not only shows the change in jurisprudence and procedure but also reveals a fundamental cultural shift from the moral expectation grounded in communal and religious beliefs to a patriarchal legalism that gradually marginalized women. Early Puritan community leaders like John Winthrop pursued both women and men accountable for sexual misconduct to uphold moral order. However, as women increasingly asserted a sense of control over their bodies and as deviant sexual behaviors challenged traditional conservative notions of sexuality, the legal system began to evolve. By the eighteenth century, this evolution had refocused punitive power almost exclusively on women. Women like Mary Latham, Martha and Deborah Proctor, and Rebekah Chamblit demonstrate how female sexuality gradually became a central concern that challenged legal and religious discipline, while male accountability quietly disappeared from the judicial stage. This shift reflected a reorientation of the moral standards that disguised patriarchal anxieties in the language of moral and religious reform. Examining the gendered application of fornication laws in 18th-century Massachusetts is helpful to understand how legal frameworks were utilized to reinforce societal hierarchies.
Reference
Barnes, The Book of the General Lawes and Libertyes Concerning the Inhabitants of the Massachusets.
Ryan, Regulating Passion, 13–14, 21–24.
Anonymous, The Second Prayer Book of Edward VI Issued 1552. The book is a historical document that includes various prayers, psalms, and religious texts that were used during the Anglican Church's worship services. It reflected the Protestant Reformation's influence on the Church of England.
Ryan, Regulating Passion, 3.
Barnes, The Book of the General Lawes and Libertyes Concerning the Inhabitants of the Massachusets.
Winthrop, The Journal of John Winthrop, 1630-1649, 500.
Winthrop, 501–2; Ulrich, “John Winthrop’s City of Women,” 39–40.
Winthrop, The Journal of John Winthrop, 1630-1649, 502.
Breen, “An Empire of Goods.”
Chandler, Law and Sexual Misconduct in New England, 1650-1750, 51–60. Historian Abby Chandler accounted for the paternity trial of Martha Proctor in this book. All trial documents are from the Essex County Court of General Sessions trial for Martha Proctor and Thomas Choat, File Papers, Box 3, Philipps Library, Peabody-Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts.
Chandler, Law and Sexual Misconduct in New England, 1650-1750, 48–50. The author does not cite a specific statute regarding the regulation that requires women who become pregnant to make a statement to legal authorities, but the legal documents that the author examines record how the courts functioned in practice, further confirming the existence of such a regulation.
Chandler, 52.
Chandler, Law and Sexual Misconduct in New England, 1650-1750, 51–54. According to the record of law practice, only men, such as fathers or male guardians, could initiate prosecution or testify with legal weight in early proceedings.
Chandler, Law and Sexual Misconduct in New England, 1650-1750, 55–60. In this section, the author analyzes the trial by summarizing statements from various depositions. Although the depositions are notably vague, and Debora Proctor’s declaration offers a detailed and pointed account implicating Thomas Choat, the jury still rendered a verdict of acquittal.
Godbeer, Sexual Revolution in Early America. Godbeer’s conclusions are grounded in extensive research, including the analysis of numerous primary documents and statistical data, which he uses to illustrate shifting social and sexual norms in colonial America.
Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs, chap. 10; Dayton, Women Before the Bar, chaps. 3–5. Both Cornelia Dayton's study of sexual regulation in Connecticut and Kathleen Brown's study of Virginia similarly find the governmental and cultural mandates that hinder societal acceptance of the “deviated” sexual standards.
Ryan, Regulating Passion, 22. The author collected the court documents from Middlesex, Suffolk, and Worcester Counties Sessions of the Peace, Record Books, 1750-1759, MA, and Plymouth Court Records, 1686-1859.
Ryan, Regulating Passion, 23. The author collected the court documents from Middlesex, Suffolk, and Worcester General Sessions, Record Books, 1740-1749 and Middlesex, Suffolk, and Worcester General Sessions, File Paper, MA.
Thomas Foxcroft, “Lessons of Caution to Young Sinners: A Sermon Preach’d on Lord’s-Day Sept. 23, 1733, upon the Affecting Occasion of an Unhappy Young Woman Present in the Assembly under Sentence of Death, 1733.”