from the Deputies.  It seems they count the respect of it too much to be left any longer with the Magistrate.  And Salaries are not spoken of; as if one sort of Men might live on the Aer...."[254] Apparently up to this date the magistrates had possessed rather a monopoly on the marriage market, and Sewall was justly worried over this new turn in affairs.  Betty, however, who had finally accepted Mr. Hirst, was married by a clergyman, as the following entry testifies:  “Oct. 17, 1700....  In the following Evening Mr. Grove Hirst and Elizabeth Sewall are married by Mr. Cotton Mather."[255]

The nearest that the Puritans of the day seem to have approached earthly hilarity on such occasions was in the serving of simple refreshments.  Strange to say, the pious Judge almost smacks his lips as he records the delicacies served at one of the weddings:  “Many of the Council went and wish’d Col.  Fitch joy of his daughter Martha’s marriage with Mr. James Allen.  Had good Bride-Cake, good Wine, Burgundy and Canary, good Beer, Oranges, Pears."[256] Again, in recording the marriage of his daughter Judith, he notes that “we had our Cake and sack-posset.”  Still again:  “May 8th, 1712.  At night, Dr. Increase Mather married Mr. Sam Gerrish, and Mrs. Sarah Coney; Dr. Cotton Mather pray’d last....  Had Gloves, Sack-Posset, and Cake...."[257]

Of course, as time went on, the good people of Massachusetts became more worldly and three quarters of a century after Sewall noted the above, some weddings had become so noisy that the godly of the old days might well have considered such affairs as riotous.  For example, Judge Pynchon records on January 2, 1781:  “Tuesday, ...  A smart firing is heard today.  (Mr. Brooks is married to Miss Hathorne, a daughter of Mr. Estey), and was as loud, and the rejoicing near as great as on the marriage of Robt.  Peas, celebrated last year; the fiddling, dancing, etc., about equal in each."[258]

V.  Matrimonial Restrictions

Necessarily, the laws dealing with wedlock were exceedingly strict in all the colonies; for there were many reckless immigrants to America, many of whom had left a bad reputation in the old country and were not building a better one in the new.  It was no uncommon thing for men and women who were married in England to pose as unmarried in the colonies, and the charge of bigamy frequently appears in the court records of the period.  Sometimes the magistrates “punished” the man by sending him back to his wife in England, but there seems to be no record of a similar form of punishment for a woman who had forgotten her distant spouse.  Strange to say, there are instances of the fining, month by month, of unmarried couples living together as man and wife—­a device still imitated by some of our city courts in dealing with inmates of disorderly houses.  All in all, the saintly of those old days had good cause for believing that the devil was continuously seeking entrance into their domain.