Differences Between Merry Old England's Sexual Morals and the New World of Boston

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                        

We forget that our first ancestors to the settle  in Plymouth Rock spoke English as they were Englishmen who had moved to Holland, and finding that and the language inadequate, moved onward on the ship, the Mayflower.  The reason they were seekers of a better life for themselves was that they had left the British state Anglican religion  for their own stricter one that followed much of what the Old Testament had to offer.  England had been a Roman Catholic country until 1534 when Henry VIII had the religion become the Church of England with a few changes to the Catholic religion.  

Laura Ulrich b: 11 July 1938 in Sugar City, Idaho, a Pulitzer Prize author.  Her parents were John Thatcher and Alice Siddoway.  She was valedictorian from Utah, but also  Harvard educated and known for her study of early America and the women.  Her other book, “A Midwife’s Tale,” was later the basis for a PBS documentary film.  Ulrich self-identifies as an active feminist and Latter-day Saint (Mormon), and has written about her experiences.  She married Gael Ulrich, now emeritus professor of chemical engineering at the University of New Hampshire. 

In the book, GOOD WIVES, by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, the author shows the difference in the morality of the new immigrant from England and the new settlers already in America who were very moral, especially sexually, unlike merry old England                             

 Ulrich gives us the example of an Englishman who hopped into the bed of a neighbor after testing her gullibility, and she didn't yield but told her mother who brought suit against him.  She explains that men were called roges (rogues)  and women were whores.  "For a woman, sexual reputation was everything, for a man, it was part of a larger pattern of responsibility.  

Pilgrim punishment;  put in the stocks.  

A whore bestowed her favors indiscriminately, denying any man exclusive right to her body.  A rogue tricked or forced a woman into submission with no regard for consequences.    The words mirror traditional gender relationships.  A woman gave, a man took."  Evidently the British Isles was made up of a lot of rogues.  Not so yet in Massachusetts.

Our early settlers were very very religious.  What surprised me was the importance of the Old Testament, our Jewish Torah and Tanakh. What my husband read from the Good Book every Shabbat when we sat down about the Good wife  in Proverbs 31: An accomplished woman who can find?  Far beyond pearls is her value.  her husband's heart relies on her, and he shall lack no fortune.  She bestows goodness upn him, never evil, all the days of her life.  She seeks wool and flax, and her hands work willingly.....etc.  

...was also used by the Pilgrims.  They were big admirers of Bathsheba, King David's love and wife.  King David is the author of all proverbs, which our Jewish history tells us.  This proverb expands on the virtues of the ideal wife, so all the Pilgrim women tried to follow in her footsteps.  Scriptural models can mean quite different things to different people, thus we have the differences between Christians and Jews.  Here, Proverbs 31 stands alone as a great model of behavior, but is a hard act to follow.  The good wife is so very good!  What energy she had!

To believe in Moloch as Canaanites did was to believe and accept human sacrifice;  the opposite of what Moses brought to the descendants of Abraham-the Jews who had been expulsed from England in  1290 and not allowed back in until 365 years later in 1655.  Pilgrims had landed on Plymouth Rock by 1620.  They never met any Jews.  I wonder if they did in Holland.  That was quite the country in those days for Jews as well.  

Marranos (hidden Jews caused by the Spanish Inquisition of 1492) rather-people hiding the fact that they were Jews, started to settle in Amsterdam.  They started to settle in Holland in the Middle Ages because of the anti-Semitism in Germany. They had freedom of worship in Holland by the 17th century.  Dutch trade was expanding and that's what they were good at as a profession.  Sephardis were there first, followed by Ashkenazis later.  With the occupation of Holland by the French Revolutionary armies in 1796, the Dutch Jewry was formally emancipated.  

Also, they followed Leviticus 20, Any man from the Children of Israel and from the proselyte who lives with Israel, who shall give of his seed to Molech,(having intercourse with Canaanites who sacrified human beings- believing in false gods like Moloch-a statue)   (shall be put to death;   the people of the land shall pelt him with stones.   the Laws and Liberties of 1648 established the death penalty for adultery, yet defined the crime according to the marital status of the woman, reinforcing the old notion of a man's property rights in his wife. 

Quaker Mary Dyer led to execution on Boston Common, 1 June 1660. Public domain image by unknown artist. Mary Dyer (born Marie Barrett; c. 1611 – 1 June 1660) was an English and colonial American Puritan turned Quaker who was hanged in Boston, Massachusetts Bay Colony, for repeatedly defying a Puritan law banning Quakers from the colony. She is one of the four executed Quakers known as the Boston martyrs.  This shows the ultimate Puritans (Pilgrims) not allowing another Christian group in their town-the Quakers. 

When Peter Stuyvesant had to make a decision of whether to let a small boatload of Jewish refugees into New Amsterdam (New York), he said, absolutely not.  He had to eat his words and change his position, or not get a paycheck from Holland. 

In September 1654, 23 Jews arrived in New Amsterdam aboard the St Cathrien. The Jews had come from Recife in Northeast Brazil, where they lived under Dutch rule. The Portuguese captured Recife from the Dutch and expelled the Jews.  (Spanish Inquisition).  
When the Jews arrived the captain of the ship sued them for the money to pay for their passage. The local court sold their belonging and imprisoned two of the party.

Peter Stuyvesant the governor of the colony was not happy to receive the Jews. He described the Jews as "deceitful" and very "repugnant". Stuyvesant asked permission from the Dutch East India Company, who the colony belonged to remove the Jews from the settlement. The board, which included several Jewish investors, refused and instructed the governor to allow the new Jewish settlers to remain in New Amsterdam.

The 23 Jews who arrived are not the first Jews, to arrive in North America, but it is the first record we have of a group of men women and children arriving to make it their permanent home.

Peter Stuyvesant (also known as Pietrus Stuyvesant), the son of a clergyman of Friesland, was born in the Netherlands in 1592. Stuyvesant served in the Dutch Army before receiving his appointment as director-general of New Netherland in 1646. He had served in the West Indies and was governor of the colony of Curacoa. 

A married man who had sexual relations with an unmarried woman risked only a fine or a whipping for fornication.  A married woman risked death.  A single woman risked only a fine or a whipping ---and of course, pregnancy!  That also happened with our ancestors.  Again, these laws were written for Jews 4,000-350,00- years ago, and the Pilgrims were trying to understand and follow literally in the 1600s CE without any rabbinical advice.  

The Pilgrims were a Separatist group, and they established the Plymouth Colony in 1620. Puritans went chiefly to New England, but small numbers went to other English colonies up and down the Atlantic.

Puritans played the leading roles in establishing the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629, the Saybrook Colony in 1635, the Connecticut Colony in 1636, and the New Haven Colony in 1638. The Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations was established by settlers expelled from Massachusetts because of their unorthodox religious opinions. Puritans were also active in New Hampshire before it became a crown colony in 1691.

 Puritanism ended early in the 18th century and before 1740 was replaced by the much milder Congregational church.  Within the United States, the model of Congregational churches was carried by migrating settlers from New England into New York, then into the Old Northwest, and further.                   

Norman Rockwell painting, Walking to Church, for Saturday Evening Post, could be of anyone's religious bent.    
            

 Unlike Presbyterians, Congregationalists practice congregational polity (from which they derive their name), which holds that the members of a local church have the right to decide their church's forms of worship and confessional statements, choose their own officers and administer their own affairs without any outside interference. Congregationalist polity is rooted in a foundational tenet of Congregationalism: the priesthood of believers. According to Congregationalist minister Charles Edward Jefferson, the priesthood of believers means that "Every believer is a priest and ... every seeking child of God is given directly wisdom, guidance, power."

Congregationalists have two sacraments: baptism and the Lord's Supper. Unlike Baptists, Congregationalists practise infant baptism. The Lord's Supper is normally celebrated once or twice a month. Congregationalists do not use the sign of the cross or invoke the intercession of saints..

   The Ten Commandments in Hebrew on a Synagogue in Portland, Oregon.  Hopefully, Jewish men 13 and older can read them, and this is a Conservative synagogue.   

Today there has been arguments about showing a sign of the 10 Commandments.  "In two 5-4 votes, the Supreme Court ruled Monday it is constitutional to display the Ten Commandments on public property as long as the intent of the exhibit isn't pushing a religious agenda. After a report from The Chicago Tribune's Jan Crawford Greenburg, two advocates debate the rulings and their fallout."

Resource:  Good Wives, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, chapter 5, the Serpent Beguiled Me, p. 84-99. 

https://plimoth.org/for-students/homework-help/who-were-the-pilgrims