Sodomy law: Massachusetts Bay, November, 1641
GL almanac pg 76-78
Massachusetts Bay legislators adopted (but did not yet print) their Body of Laws and Liberties, welcoming refugees from famines, wars, or "the Tyranny or oppression of their persecutors." [1] [2] This code, written by the Reverend Nathaniel Ward, included the death penalty for sodomy (refered to only as "man lying with mankind as he lies with a woman"). A list of those particular crimes punished by death was printed as a broadside, purportedly first in Massachusetts in 1641-42, then, with some additions, in London in 1643. The original Massachusetts broadside of 1641-42 (no copies of which now exist) was the first publication of any laws in colonial America. Most of the fifteen capital crimes listed in t.he London broadside of 1643 were based on Old Testament references actually cited in the text. The capital laws of Massachusetts Bay provided death for
(1) "any man" who worshiped any God "but the Lord God";
(2) "any man or woman" who "be a Witch";
(3) "any person" who shall "blaspheme the Name of God";
(4) "any person" who commited "willful [premeditated] murder" (or "manslaughter");
(5) "any person" who "slayeth another suddenly," in anger;
(6) "any person" who slew another "through guile";
(7) "a man or woman" who shall "lie wit.h any beast, or brute creature, by carnal copulation" (the beast. also was to be "slain, and buried");
(8) "a man [who] lyeth with mankind, as he lyeth with a woman" (both parties were to be executed);
(9) "any person" who committed "adultery with a married, or espoused {engaged} wife" (both "the Adulterer, and the Adulteress" were to be executed);
(10) "any man" who had "carnal copulation with any woman-child under ten years old, either with, or without her consent";
(11) "any man" who "forcibly," without consent, "shall ravish any maid or woman that is lawfully married or contracted";
(12) "any man" who shall "ravish any maid or single woman" above the age of ten "(committing carnal copulation with her by force, against her will)"-the penalty was either death or "some other grievous punishment, according to the circumstances";
(13) "any man" who "stealeth a man, or man-kind" (the latter term was no doubt intended to include women);
(14) "any man" who "by false witness" (perjury) intended "to take away any man's life";
(15) "any man" who shall "conspire, or attempt any invasion, insurrection, or public rebellion against our Common-wealth," or who shall "attempt the alteration and subversion of our frame of polity, or government fundamentally" (treason).
(Crimes 10, 11, and 12 were added to the original list on June 14, 1642,
after the case of male-female child abuse described in the next entry.)
The sodomy provision (number 8), quoted from the Old Testament, read:
If a man lyeth with mankind, as he lyeth with a woman, both of them have
committed abomination, they both shall surely be put to death. Lev. 20:13.
The whole Body of Laws and Liberties was first printed in 1648.
References
- ↑ "The passage of this law, and the duster of sodomy, bestiality, and related cases, 1641-42, coincided with an "economic depression which befell the [Massachusetts Bay] colony, in 1639, as a result of the drift toward civil war in England. Immigration came virtually to a halt." The "onset of war in 1642, together with the colony's growing reputation for intolerance, not only discouraged new settlers but even c.fused many of the colonists to return to England or settle elsewhere. These developments had a profound effect on the economy of the colony." With the "rapid growth of a debtor class" came "an attendant increase in crime"; see George Lee Haskins, Law and Authority in Early Massachusetts; A Study in Tradition and Design (N. Y.: Macmillan, 1960), pp. 107-09; also see pp. 60, 171, 177,215. We may speculate that the temporary halt in immigration as a means of population increase was associated with a greater stress on procreation, a greater concern about non-procreative sexual acts.
- ↑ 13. 1641, Nov.: Massachusetts Bay sodomy law; Wm. H. Whitmore, ed., The Colonial Laws of Massachusetts (Boston: Rockwell and Churchill. 1890), p. 55; George L. Haskins, "The Capital! Lawes of New England," Haroard Law School Bulletin. vol. 7 (Feb. 1976), pp. IQ-ll; Charles M. Andrews. The Colonial Period in American History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 193438). vol. I. pp. 454-59.
