Note 537 — Chapter XII · OBLIGATORY CIVIL MARRIAGE IN THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES
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These convictions are usually not for "adultery," but for being in bed together, according to a clause of the act of 1694 providing that when a man is found in bed with another person's wife each offender shall receive not more than thirty stripes, unless one was surprised and not consenting. For examples, some of them acquittals and some convictions, see MSS. Records of the Superior Court of Judicature, I (Oct. 30, 1694), fol. 129; ibid., III (May 7, 1700), foll. 10, 11; ibid., 1736-38 (Aug. 8, 1738), fol. 209; ibid., 1757-59 (Aug. 1, 1758), 391; ibid., 1757-59 (Feb. 21, 1759), 554; ibid., 1760-62 (Sept. 16, 1760), foll. 122, 123; ibid., 1763-64 (Jan. 25, 1763), fol. 11; ibid., 1763-64 (April 26, 1763), fol. 44; ibid., 1767-68 (April 12, 1765), fol. 164; MSS. Records of Gen. Sessions of Suffolk (April 2, 1717), II, 151.
For the earlier period the Athenæum copy of the MSS. Records of the County Court of Suffolk, 34 (March 17, 1671-72), 113 (Jan. 28, 1672-73), 585 (May 5, 1679), 633 (Jan. 27, 1679-80), contains four analogous cases; and there is one in MSS. Records of the County Court of Middlesex (April 1, 1684), IV, 97.