An online resource
You can’t be a genuine law geek without breaking into a smile when you discover that one city, in one state, reprinted an entire body of its earliest colonial laws — and included a whole introduction outlining the known sources of manuscripts used.
And you can’t be a genuine law geek without breaking into a happy dance when you discover that the reprint has been digitized and is online, free.
So… without further ado… the source of today’s happy dance:
The Colonial Laws of Massachusetts: Reprinted from the Edition of 1672 with the Supplements Through 1686.1
Now maybe it doesn’t float your boat to read that Phillip White was fined in 1642 for drunkenness,2 or that there were substantial bounties on wolves to be paid in 16613 or that ships’ masters and seamen were barred in 1663 from drinking healths or shooting off their guns after dark or on Sunday.4
Maybe you’re not interested in the fact that it was illegal even to possess cards or dice for gaming in 1670,5 that it was heresy — and illegal to boot — for any Christian over the age of 16 to deny the Books of the Old Testament or any of the New Testament as as “the written and infallible Word of God,”6 or that there was a system in place as early as the 1630s for settling wage disputes between masters and servants.7
It’s possible that you don’t really care that Massachusetts minted 12-penny, six-penny and three-penny coins in the 1650s,8 that a man couldn’t be whipped for a crime “unless his Crime be very shameful, and his course of life vicious and profligate,”9 or that — talk about a statute near and dear to a genealogist’s heart — anybody damaging or defacing a public record might be locked up for two months or “stand in the Pillory two hours in Boston Market, with a Paper over his head written in Capital Letters, A DEFACER OF RECORDS.”10
Maybe those things don’t interest you.
But as for The Legal Genealogist…?
Um… don’t bother me.
I’m reading old statutes.
SOURCES
- William Henry Whitmore, ed., The Colonial Laws of Massachusetts: Reprinted from the Edition of 1672 with the Supplements Through 1686 (Boston: Rockwell & Churchill, City Printers, 1890); digital images, Google Books (http://books.google.com : accessed 13 Apr 2015). ↩
- Ibid. at 3. ↩
- Ibid. at 160. ↩
- Ibid. at 140. ↩
- Ibid. at 58. ↩
- Ibid. at 59. ↩
- Ibid. at 105. ↩
- Ibid. at 117. ↩
- Ibid. at 119. ↩
- Ibid. 1t 131. ↩
Judy,
I may not be a lawyer, but I’m with you. These old law statues are fascinating. Love reading these sorts of historical items.
Thanks for sharing.
Diane
They really are wonderful resources, and help tell our ancestors’ stories!
So how bad was a pillory if two hours in one was as bad as 2 months in prison?
Pretty darned humiliating, to be out there in front of everybody!
And having to go to the bathroom…
I am about to head over to Google Books. This sounds very interesting. (I am not a lawyer, but I like to read old law books for entertainment. They are truly fascinating. Add genealogy, and you know I’m going to be in there for a good long time.)
I wonder if it is in Public Library as well? Must check.
Up for air. It really is fascinating. Right off the bat, I learned that sizes and amount of wheat flour in loaves of bread were regulated and, each loaf had to have a mark identifying who made it. Is that cool or what? And if a merchant screwed up and a batch had to be confiscated, the agent got 1/3 and the rest went to the poor. Sure helps to get a feel for life. I can almost smell the bread, and see the loaves being carefully partitioned and weighed. A goodwife or her servant putting a loaf into her basket. I love stuff like this.