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Hawthorne's 'Spectacle Of Guilt And Shame' And The Law Of Adultery In Puritan New England: 1631-1694., Joshua Erspamer Mr.

joshua Erspamer Mr.

The death penalty for the crime of adultery was only imposed on three occasions by the courts in colonial New England. Of these three, a majority come from Puritan Massachusetts. However, this majority is limited to one case and two defendants: the 1644 case of Mary Latham and James Brittaine. Adultery was codified as a capital crime in the Bay Colony in the 1641 Body of Liberties which remained in effect until the loss of charter and merger with Massachusetts Bay Province at the end of the century. This work explores the reasons for the Bay Colony court’s resistance to …