The use of the death penalty for adultery seems, however, to have ceased before the days of Sewall’s Diary:  for, though he often mentions the crime, he makes no mention of such a punishment.  The custom of execution for far less heinous offences was prevalent in the seventeenth century, as any reader of Defoe and other writers of his day is well aware, and certainly the American colonists cannot be blamed for exercising the severest laws against offenders of so serious a nature against society.  The execution of a woman was no unusual act anywhere in the world during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the Americans did not hesitate to give the extreme penalty to female criminals.  Sewall rather cold-bloodedly records a number of such executions and reveals absolutely no spirit of protest.

     “Thorsday, June 8, 1693.  Elisabeth Emerson of Haverhill and a
     Negro Woman were executed after Lecture, for murdering their
     Infant children."[282]

     “Monday, 7r, 11th....  The Mother of a Bastard Child condemn’d for
     murthering it...."[283]

     “Sept. 25th, 1691.  Elisabeth Clements of Haverhill is tried for
     murdering her two female bastard children...."[284]

     “Friday, July 10th, 1685....  Mr. Stoughton also told me of George
     Car’s wife being with child by another Man, tells the Father,
     Major Pike sends her down to Prison.  Is the Governour’s
     Grandchild by his daughter Cotton...."[285]

From the court records in Howard’s History of Matrimonial Institutions we learn:  “’In 1648 the Corte acquit Elisa Pennion of the capitall offence charged upon her by 2 sevrall inditements for adultery,’ but sentence her to be ‘whiped’ in Boston, and again at ’Linn wthin one month.’” “On a special verdict by the jury the assistants sentenced Elizabeth Hudson and Bethia Bulloine (Bullen) ’married women and sisters,’ to ’be by the Marshall Generall ... on ye next lecture day presently after the lecture carried to the Gallowes & there by ye Executioner set on the ladder & with a Roape about her neck to stand on the Gallowes an half houre & then brought ... to the market place & be seriously whipt wth tenn stripes or pay the Sume of tenn pounds’ standing committed till the sentence be performed.’"[286]

When punishment by death came to be considered too severe and when the crime seemed to deserve more than whipping, the guilty one was frequently given a mark of disgrace by means of branding, so that for all time any one might see and think upon the penalty for such a sin.  All modern readers are familiar with the Salem form—­the scarlet letter—­made so famous by Hawthorne, a mark sometimes sewed upon the bosom or the sleeve of the dress, sometimes burnt into the flesh of the breast.  Howard, who has made such fruitful search in the history of marriage, presents several specimens of this strange kind of punishment: