no redress called for save where there
is a wrong, if we do not allow the redress, there will, of course, be no
wrong. There is no escape from the conclusion that divorce or irregular
connections will prevail in every community; why not agree with Milton
that honest liberty is the greatest foe to dishonest license?

When the founders of the new Commonwealth came to these shores they
brought with them of necessity the laws of the mother country, and so we
shall find that the divorce laws of England, as they existed at that
time, were the early laws of the colonies of Plymouth and Massachusetts
Bay. The Ecclesiastical courts of England were invested with full
jurisdiction of all matters of divorce, but from about the year 1601
they had steadily refused to grant an absolute divorce for any cause
whatever, although they as constantly granted divorce from bed and
board, allusion to which has already been made; that is, they decreed a
judicial separation of man and wife, which freed the parties from the
society of each other, but at the same time left upon them all the
obligations of the marriage vow as to third parties. Finally, when
divorce was sought for cause of adultery, resort was had to parliament,
and in 1669 an absolute divorce for that cause was granted by that body
for the first time. This mode of procedure was, of course, a most
expensive one, and during the seventeenth century but three decrees
absolute were granted, the parties in each belonging to the peerage and
the cause being the same.

In cases arising in the early history of the colonies we should
therefore expect to find the law as I have briefly sketched it as
existing in England, and as there were then no courts exercising the
functions of the Ecclesiastical Courts we might safely look for the
exercise of these powers by the Court of Deputies, or General Court,
which was at that time not simply a deliberative body, but also a court
of most extensive and varied jurisdiction, in matters both civil and
criminal. This was precisely the fact; the records show that in 1652
Mrs. Dorothy Pester presented to the General Court her petition for
leave to marry again, giving as her reason the fact that her husband had
sailed for England some ten years before, and had not been heard from
since. The court decreed that liberty be granted her to marry, "when God
in his providence shall afford her the opportunity." In 1667 the same
court refused to grant a like petitio