were fifteen crimes punishable
with death, while the law took hold also of innumerable petty
offences. In addition the magistrates had a discretionary authority,
and they often punished persons on mere suspicion.

There can be no doubt that the ideal of the educated Puritan was lofty
and high, and that society in New England was remarkably free from the
ordinary frivolities and immoralities of mankind; but it would seem
that human nature exacted a severe retaliation for the undue
suppression of its weaknesses. There are in the works of Bradford and
Winthrop, as well as in the records of the colonies, evidence which
shows that the streams of wickedness in New England were "dammed" and
not dried up. At intervals the impure waters broke over the obstacles
in their way, till the record of crime caused the good Bradford "to
fear and tremble at the consideration of our corrupt natures."[26]

The conveniences of town life gave opportunities for literature not
enjoyed by the Virginians, and, though his religion cut the Puritan
almost entirely off from the finer fields of poetry and arts, New
England in the period of which we have been considering was strong in
history and theology. Thus the works of Bradford and Winthrop and of
Hooker and Cotton compare favorably with the best productions of their
contemporaries in England, and contrast with the later writers of
Cotton Mather's "glacial period," when, under the influence of the
theocracy, "a lawless and merciless fury for the odd, the disorderly,
the grotesque, the violent, strained analogies, unexpected images,
pedantics, indelicacies, freaks of allusion, and monstrosities of
phrase" were the traits of New England literature.[27]

[Footnote 1: N.H. Hist. Soc., _Collections_, I., 323-326.]

[Footnote 2: Winthrop, _New England_, II., 222-224, 228, 238-240.]

[Footnote 3: _New England's Jonas Cast Up at London_ (Force, _Tracts_,
IV., No. iii.); Winthrop, _New England_, II., 319, 340, 358, 391.]

[Footnote 4: Winthrop, _New England_, II., 329, 330, 402.]

[Footnote 5: Mather, _Magnalia_, book V.]

[Footnote 6: Adams, _Massachusetts, its Historians and its History_,
59.]

[Footnote 7: Fiske, _Beginnings of New England_, 179.]

[Footnote 8: Johnson, _Wonder Working Providence,_ book III., chap.
i.]

[Footnote 9: Weeden, _Econ. and Soc. Hist. of New England,_ I., 143.]

[Footnote 10: Palfrey, _New England,_ II., 53.]

[Footnote 11: _Mass. Col. Records,_ I., 344.]

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