Note 32 — BUNDLING.

The Rev. Alonzo B. Chapin, in his History of Ancient Glastenbury, Conn. (p. 80), says that the church records, during the pastorate of the Rev. John Eels [1759-1791], "compel us to believe that the influence of the French war had been as unfavorable to morals as destructive to life; and that the absurd practice of bundling prevalent in those days, was not infrequently attended with the consequences that might have been expected, and that both together, aided by a previous growing laxity of morals, and accelerated by many concurrent causes, had rolled a tide of immorality over the land, which not even the bulwark of the church had been able to withstand. The church records of the first society, from 1760 to 1790, raise presumptions of the strongest kind, that then, as since, incontinence and intemperance were among the sins of the people. What the condition of things in Eastbury [an ecclesiastical society in the east part of Glastenbury] was, we have no means of knowing, as that portion of the church records which treats of this point, was long ago carefully removed. [N.B. Italics are our own.] There is no reason, however, to suppose that this state of thing's was peculiar to Glastenbury, for there is too much evidence that it prevailed throughout the country."