Note 513 — Chapter XII · OBLIGATORY CIVIL MARRIAGE IN THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES

The "elders" being appealed to promptly decided that the three persons then lying in prison should be put to death, "if the law had been sufficiently published." But for the reasons named in the text the general court thought it was "safest that these persons should be whipped and banished": Winthrop, Hist. of New England, I, 309; Mass. Col. Rec., I, 198, 202, 203, 225. Compare the excellent monograph of Davis, The Law of Adultery and Ignominious Punishments, 6-11, who gives the details regarding this case and the law of 1631; and calls attention to the English act of 1650, which classes incest and adultery among felonies, citing thereon Pike, Hist. of Crime in England, II, 182; and Blackstone, Commentaries, IV, 64.