r fashion of their apparel, in any
respect"! And finally, a law passed in 1662 forbids "children and
servants" to wear any apparel "exceeding the quality and condition of
their persons or estate," "the grand jury and country court of the
shire" being judges of the offence.

One provision of the law of 1634 against "new and immodest fashions" is
too remarkable to be omitted. It reads as follows: "Moreover, it is
agreed, if any man shall judge the wearing of any the forenamed
particulars, new fashions, or long hair, or anything of the like nature,
to be uncomely or prejudicial to the common good, and the party
offending reform not the same, upon notice given him, that then the next
Assistant, being informed thereof, shall have power to bind the party so
offending to answer it at the next Court, if the case so requires;
provided, and it is the meaning of the Court, that men and women shall
have liberty to wear out such apparel as they are now provided of
(except the immoderate great sleeves, slashed apparel, immoderate great
veils, long wings, etc.)." What intolerable tyranny of private
surveillance is indicated in the phrase, "what any man shall judge to be
uncomely"!

In the second letter of instructions (dated June, 1629) to Endicott and
his Council, they are exhorted to prevent the sale of "strong waters" to
the Indians, and to punish any of their own people who shall become
drunk in the use of them. In the preamble to a law enacted in 1646, one
is led to expect an enforcement of the modern principles of abstinence
and prohibition; since, after declaring that "drunkenness is a vice to
be abhorred of all nations, especially of those which hold out and
profess the Gospel of Christ Jesus," it goes on to assert that "any
strict laws against the sin will not prevail unless the cause be taken
away." But it would seem that "the cause," in the eyes of our Puritan
lawmakers, was an indiscriminate sale of spirituous drinks; for the law
chiefly enacts that none but "vintners" shall have permission to retail
wine and "strong water." It is also permitted to constables to search
any tavern, or even any private house, "suspected to sell wine contrary
to this order." Moreover, no person is "to drink or tipple at
unseasonable times in houses of entertainment,"--the "unseasonable" time
being declared to be after nine in the evening.

But these laws were of small avail, for, in 1648, the Court is grieved
to confess: "It is found by ex