In general, however, offenses of any other kind, even of the most trivial nature, were given much more notice than at present; indeed, wrong doers were dragged into the lime-light for petty matters that we of to-day would consider too insignificant or too private to deserve public attention.  The English laws of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were exceedingly severe; but where these failed to provide for irregular conduct, the American colonists readily created additional statutes.  We have seen the legal attitude of early America toward witchcraft; gossip, slander, tale-bearing, and rebellious speeches were coped with just as confidently.  The last mentioned “crime,” rebellious speech, seems to have been rather common in later New England where women frequently spoke against the authority of the church.  Their speech may not have been genuinely rebellious but the watchful Puritans took no chance in matters of possible heresy.  Thus, Winthrop tells us:  “The lady Moodye, a wise and anciently religious woman, being taken with the error of denying baptism to infants, was dealt withal by many of the elders, and others, and admonished by the church of Salem, ... but persisting still, and to avoid further trouble, etc., she removed to the Dutch against the advice of all her friends....  She was after excommunicated."[293]

Sometimes, too, the supposedly meek character of the colonial woman took a rather Amazonian turn, and the court records, diaries, and chronicles present case after case in which wives made life for their husbands more of a battle cry than one gladsome song.  Surely the following citations prove that some colonial dames had opinions of their own and strong fists with which to back up their opinions: 

“Joan, wife of Obadiah Miller of Taunton, was presented for ’beating and reviling her husband, and egging her children to healp her, bidding them knock him in the head, and wishing his victuals might choake him.’"[294a]

“In 1637 in Salem, ’Whereas Dorothy the wyfe of John Talbie hath not only broak that peace & loue, wch ought to hauve beene both betwixt them, but also hath violentlie broke the king’s peace, by frequent laying hands upon hir husband to the danger of his Life....  It is therefore ordered that for hir misdemeanor passed & for prvention of future evill.... that she shall be bound & chained to some post where shee shall be restrained of her libertye to goe abroad or comminge to hir husband, till shee manefest some change of hir course....  Only it is permitted that shee shall come to the place of gods worshipp, to enjoy his ordenances.’"[294b]

Women also could appeal to the strong arm of the law against the wrath of their loving husbands:  “In 1638 John Emerson of Scituate was tried before the general court for abusing his wife; the same year for beating his wife, Henry Seawall was sent for examination before the court at Ipswich; and in 1663, Ensigne John Williams, of Barnstable, was fined by the Plymouth court for slandering his wife."[295]