In the early New England meeting-houses the seats were long, narrow, uncomfortable benches, which were made of simple, rough, hand-riven planks placed on legs like milking-stools. They were without any support or rest for the back; and perhaps the stiff-backed Pilgrims and Puritans required or wished no support. Quickly, as the colonies grew in wealth and the colonists in ambition and importance, "Spots for Pues" were sold (or "pitts" as they were sometimes called), at first to some few rich or influential men who wished to sit in a group together, and finally each family of dignity or wealth sat in its own family-pew. Often it was stipulated in the permission to build a pew that a separate entrance-door should be cut into it through the outside wall of the meeting-house, thus detracting grievously from the external symmetry of the edifice, but obviating the necessity of a space-occupying entrance aisle within the church, where there was little enough sitting-room for the quickly increasing and universally church-going population. As these pews were either oblong or square, were both large and small, painted and unpainted, and as each pewholder could exercise his own "tast or disresing" in the kind of wood he used in the formation of his pew, as well as in the style of finish, much diversity and incongruity of course resulted. A man who had a wainscoted pew was naturally and properly much respected and envied by the entire community. These pews, erected by individual members, were individual and not communal property. A widow in Cape Cod had her house destroyed by fire. She was given from the old meeting-house, which was being razed, the old building materials to use in the construction of her new home. She was not allowed, however, to remove the wood which formed the pews, as they were adjudged to be the property of the members who had built them, and those owners only could sell or remove the materials of which they were built.
Many of the pews in the old meeting-houses had towering partition walls, which extended up so high that only the tops of the tallest heads could be seen when the occupants were seated. Permissions to build were often given with modifying restrictions to the aspiring pew-builders, as for instance is recorded of the Haverhill church, "provided they would not build so high as to damnify and hinder the light of them windows," or of the Waterbury church, "if the pues will not progodish the hous." Often the floor of the pews was several inches and occasionally a foot higher than the floor of the "alleys," thus forming at the entrance-door of the pew one or two steps, which were great stumbling-blocks to clumsy and to childish feet, that tripped again when within the pew over the "crickets" and foot-benches which were, if the family were large, the accepted and lowly church-seats of the little children. Occasionally one long, low foot-rest stretched quite across one side of the pew-floor. I have seen these long benches with a tier of three shelves; the lower and broader shelf was used as a foot-rest, the second one was to hold the hats of the men, and the third and narrower shelf was for the hymn-books and Bibles. Such comfortable and luxurious pew-furnishings could never have been found in many churches.
An old New Englander relates a funny story of his youth, in which one of these triple-tiered foot-benches played an important part. When he was a boy a travelling show visited his native town, and though he was not permitted to go within the mystic and alluring tent, he stood longingly at the gate, and was prodigiously diverted and astonished by an exhibition of tight-rope walking, which was given outside the tent-door as a bait to lure pleasure-loving and frivolous townspeople within, and also as a tantalization to the children of the saints who were not allowed to enter the tent of the wicked. Fired by that bewildering and amazing performance, he daily, after the wonderful sight, practised walking on rails, on fences, on fallen trees, and on every narrow foothold which he could find, as a careful preparation for a final feat and triumph of skill on his mother's clothes-line. In an evil hour, as he sat one Sunday in the corner of his father's pew, his eyes rested on the narrow ledge which formed the top of the long foot-bench. Satan can find mischief for idle boys within church as well as without, and the desire grew stronger to try to walk on that narrow foothold. He looked at his father and mother, they were peacefully sleeping; so also were the grown-up occupants of the neighboring pews; the pew walls were high, the minister seldom glanced to right or left; a thousand good reasons were whispered in his ear by the mischief-finder, and at last he willingly yielded, pulled off his heavy shoes, and softly mounted the foot-bench. He walked forward and back with great success twice, thrice, but when turning for a fourth tour he suddenly lost his balance, and over he went with a resounding crash--hats, psalm-books, heavy bench, and all. He crushed into hopeless shapelessness his father's gray beaver meeting-hat, a long-treasured and much-loved antique; he nearly smashed his mother's kid-slippered foot to jelly, and the fall elicited from her, in the surprise of the sudden awakening and intense pain, an ear-piercing shriek, which, with the noisy crash, electrified the entire meeting. All the grown people stood up to investigate, the children climbed on the seats to look at the guilty offender and his deeply mortified parents; while the minister paused in his sermon and said with cutting severity, "I have always regretted that the office of tithingman has been abolished in this community, as his presence and his watchful care are sadly needed by both the grown persons and the children in this congregation." The wretched boy who had caused all the commotion and disgrace was of course uninjured by his fall, but a final settlement at home between father and son on account of this sacrilegious piece of church disturbance made the unhappy would-be tight-rope walker wish that he had at least broken his arm instead of his father's hat and his mother's pride and the peace of the congregation.
The seats were sometimes on four sides of these pews, but oftener on three sides only, thus at least two thirds of the pew occupants did not face the minister. The pew-seats were as narrow and uncomfortable as the plebeian benches, though more exclusive, and, with the high partition walls, quite justified the comment of a little girl when she first attended a service in one of these old-fashioned, square-pewed churches. She exclaimed in dismay, "What! must I be shut up in a closet and sit on a shelf?" Often elderly people petitioned to build separate small pens of pews with a single wider seat as "through the seats being so very narrow" they could not sit in comfort.
The seats were, until well into this century, almost universally hung on hinges, and could be turned up against the walls of the pew, thus enabling the standing congregation to lean for support against the sides of the pews during the psalm-singing and the long, long prayers.
"And when at last the loud AmenFell from aloft, how quickly thenThe seats came down with heavy rattle,Like musketry in fiercest battle."
This noise of slamming pew-seats could easily be heard over half a mile away from the meeting-house in the summer time, for the perverse boys contrived always in their salute of welcome to the Amen to give vent in a most tremendous bang to a little of their pent up and ill-repressed energies. In old church-orders such entries as this (of the Haverhill church) are frequently seen: "The people are to Let their Seats down without Such Nois." "The boyes are not to wickedly noise down there pew-seats." A gentleman attending the old church in Leicester heard at the beginning of the prayer, for the first time in his life, the noise of slamming pew-seats, as the seats were thrust up against the pew-walls. He jumped into the aisle at the first clatter, thinking instinctively that the gallery was cracking and falling. Another stranger, a Southerner, entering rather late at a morning service in an old church in New England, was greeted with the rattle of falling seats, and exclaimed in amazement, "Do you Northern people applaud in church?"
In many meeting-houses the tops of the pews and of the high gallery railings were ornamented with little balustrades of turned wood, which were often worn quite bare of paint by childish fingers that had tried them all "to find which ones would turn," and which, alas! would also squeak. This fascinating occupation whiled away many a tedious hour in the dreary church, and in spite of weekly forbidding frowns and whispered reproofs for the shrill, ear-piercing squeaks elicited by turning the spindle-shaped balusters, was entirely too alluring a time-killer to be abandoned, and consequently descended, an hereditary church pastime, from generation to generation of the children of the Puritans; and indeed it remained so strong an instinct that many a grown person, visiting in after life a church whose pews bore balustrades like the ones of his childhood, could scarce keep his itching fingers from trying them each in succession "to see which ones would turn."
These open balustrades also afforded fine peep-holes through which, by standing or kneeling upon "the shelf," a child might gaze at his neighbor; and also through which sly missiles--little balls of twisted paper--could be snapped, to the annoyance of some meek girl or retaliating boy, until the young marksman was ignominiously pulled down by his mother from his post of attack. And through these balustrades the same boy a few years later could thrust sly missives, also of twisted paper, to the girl whom he had once assailed and bombarded with his annoying paper bullets.
Through the pillared top-rail a restless child in olden days often received, on a hot summer Sabbath from a farmer's wife or daughter in an adjoining pew, friendly and quieting gifts of sprigs of dill, or fennel, or caraway, famous anti-soporifics; and on this herbivorous food he would contentedly browse as long as it lasted. An uneasy, sermon-tired little girl was once given through the pew-rail several stalks of caraway, and with them a large bunch of aromatic southernwood, or "lad's-love" which had been brought to meeting by the matron in the next pew, with a crudely and unconsciously aesthetic sense that where eye and ear found so little to delight them, there the pungent and spicy fragrance of the southernwood would be doubly grateful to the nostrils. Little Missy sat down delightedly to nibble the caraway-seed, and her mother seeing her so quietly and absorbingly occupied, at once fell contentedly and placidly asleep in her corner of the pew. But five heads of caraway, though each contain many score of seeds, and the whole number be slowly nibbled and eaten one seed at a time, will not last through the child's eternity of a long doctrinal sermon; and when the umbels were all devoured, the young experimentalist began upon the stalks and stems, and they, too, slowly disappeared. She then attacked the sprays of southernwood, and in spite of its bitter, wormwoody flavor, having nothing else to do, she finished it, all but the tough stems, just as the long sermon was brought to a close. Her waking mother, discovering no signs of green verdure in the pew, quickly drew forth a whispered confession of the time-killing Nebuchadnezzar-like feast, and frightened and horrified, at once bore the leaf-gorged child from the church, signalling in her retreat to the village doctor, who quickly followed and administered to the omnivorous young New Englander a bolus which made her loathe to her dying day, through a sympathetic association and memory, the taste of caraway, and the scent of southernwood.
An old gentleman, lamenting the razing of the church of his childhood, told the story of his youthful Sabbaths in rhyme, and thus refers with affectionate enthusiasm to the old custom of bringing bunches of esculent "sallet" herbs to meeting:--
"And when I tired and restless grew,Our next pew neighbor, Mrs. True,Reached her kind hand the top rail throughTo hand me dill, and fennel too,And sprigs of caraway.
"And as I munched the spicy seeds,I dimly felt that kindly deedsThat thus supply our present needs,Though only gifts of pungent weeds,Show true religion.
"And often now through sermon triteAnd operatic singer's flight,I long for that old friendly sight,The hand with herbs of value light,To help to pass the time."
Were the dill and "sweetest fennel" chosen Sabbath favorites for their old-time virtues and powers?
"Vervain and dillHinder witches of their ill."
And of the charmed fennel Longfellow wrote:--
"The fennel with its yellow flowersThat, in an earlier age than ours,Was gifted with the wondrous powers,Lost vision to restore."
And traditions of mysterious powers, dream-influencing, spirit-exorcising, virtue-awakening, health-giving properties, hung vaguely around the southernwood and made it specially fit to be a Sabbath-day posy. These traditions are softened by the influence of years into simply idealizing, in the mind of every country-bred New Englander, the peculiar refreshing scent of the southernwood as a typical Sabbath-day fragrance. Half a century ago, the pretty feathery pale-green shrub grew in every country door-yard, humble or great, throughout New England; and every church-going woman picked a branch or spray of it when she left her home on Sabbath morn. To this day, on hot summer Sundays, many a staid old daughter of the Puritans may be seen entering the village meeting-house, clad in a lilac-sprigged lawn or a green-striped barège,--a scanty-skirted, surplice-waisted relic of past summers,--with a lace-bordered silk cape or a delicate, time-yellowed, purple and white cashmere scarf on her bent shoulders, wearing on her gray head a shirred-silk or leghorn bonnet, and carrying in her lace-mitted hand a fresh handkerchief, her spectacle-case and well-worn Bible, and a great sprig of the sweet, old-fashioned "lad's-love." A rose, a bunch of mignonette would be to her too gay a posy for the Lord's House and the Lord's Day. And balmier breath than was ever borne by blossom is the pure fragrance of green growing things,--southernwood, mint, sweet fern, bayberry, sweetbrier. No rose is half so fresh, so countrified, so memory-sweet.
The benches and the pew-seats in the old churches were never cushioned. Occasionally very old or feeble women brought cushions to meeting to sit upon. It is a matter of recent tradition that Colonel Greenleaf caused a nine days' talk in Newbury town at the beginning of this century when he cushioned his pew. The widow of Sir William Pepperell, who lived in imposing style, had her pew cushioned and lined and curtained with worsted stuff, and carpeted with a heavy bear-skin. This worn, faded, and moth-eaten furniture remained in the Kittery church until the year 1840, just as when Lady Pepperell furnished and occupied the pew. Nor were even the seats of the pulpit cushioned. The "cooshoons" of velvet or leather, which were given by will to the church, and which were kept in the pulpit, and were nibbled by the squirrels, were for the Bible, not the minister, to rest upon.
In many churches--in Durham, Concord and Sandwich--the pews had swing-shelves, "leaning shelves," upon which a church attendant could rest his paper and his arm when taking notes from the sermon, as was at one time the universal custom, and in which even school-boys of a century ago had to take part. Funny stories are told of the ostentatious notes taken by pompous parishioners who could neither write nor read, but who could scribble, and thus cut a learned figure.
The doors of the pews were usually cut down somewhat lower than the pew-walls, and frequently had no top-rails. They sometimes bore the name of the pew-owner painted in large white letters. They were secured when closed by clumsy wooden buttons. In many country congregations the elderly men--stiff old farmers--had a fashion of standing up in the middle of the sermon to stretch their cramped limbs, and they would lean against and hang over the pew door and stare up and down the aisle. In Andover, Vermont, old Deacon Puffer never let a summer Sunday pass without thus resting and diverting himself. One day, having ill-secured the wooden button at the door of his pew, the leaning-place gave way under his weight, and out he sprawled on all-fours, with a loud clatter, into the middle of the aisle, to the amusement of the children, and the mortification of his wife.
Thus it may be seen, as an old autobiography phrases it, "diversions was frequent in meeting, and the more duller the sermon, the more likely it was that some accident or mischief would be done to help to pass the time."
Perhaps no duty was more important and more difficult of satisfactory performance in the church work in early New England than "seating the meeting-house." Our Puritan forefathers, though bitterly denouncing all forms and ceremonies, were great respecters of persons; and in nothing was the regard for wealth and position more fully shown than in designating the seat in which each person should sit during public worship. A committee of dignified and influential men was appointed to assign irrevocably to each person his or her place, according to rank and importance. Whittier wrote of this custom:--
"In the goodly house of worship, where in order due and fit,As by public vote directed, classed and ranked the people sit;Mistress first and goodwife after, clerkly squire before the clown,From the brave coat, lace embroidered: to the gray frock shading down."
In many cases the members of the committee were changed each year or at each fresh seating, in order to obviate any of the effects of partiality through kinship, friendship, personal esteem, or debt. A second committee was also appointed to seat the members of committee number one, in order that, as Haverhill people phrased it, "there may be no Grumbling at them for picking and placing themselves."
This seating committee sent to the church the list of all the attendants and the seats assigned to them, and when the list had been twice or thrice read to the congregation, and nailed on the meeting-house door, it became a law. Then some such order as this of the church at Watertown, Connecticut, was passed: "It is ordered that the next Sabbath Day every person shall take his or her seat appointed to them, and not go to any other seat where others are placed: And if any one of the inhabitants shall act contrary, he shall for the first offence be reproved by the deacons, and for a second pay a fine of two shillings, and a like fine for each offence ever after." Or this of the Stratham church: "When the comety have Seatid the meeting-house every person that is Seatid shall set in those Seats or pay Five Shillings Pir Day for every day they set out of There seats in a Disorderly Manner to advance themselves Higher in the meeting-house." These two church-laws were very lenient. In many towns the punishments and fines were much more severe. Two men of Newbury were in 1669 fined £27 4s. each for "disorderly going and setting in seats belonging to others." They were dissatisfied with the seats assigned to them by the seating committee, and openly and defiantly rebelled. Other and more peaceable citizens "entred their Decents" to the first decision of the committee and asked for reconsideration of their special cases and for promotion to a higher pew before the final orders were "Jsued."
In all the Puritan meetings, as then and now in Quaker meetings, the men sat on one side of the meeting-house and the women on the other; and they entered by separate doors. It was a great and much-contested change when men and women were ordered to sit together "promiscuoslie." In front, on either side of the pulpit (or very rarely in the foremost row in the gallery), was a seat of highest dignity, known as the "foreseat," in which only the persons of greatest importance in the community sat.
Sometimes a row of square pews was built on three sides of the ground floor, and each pew occupied by separate families, while the pulpit was on the fourth side. If any man wished such a private pew for himself and family, he obtained permission from the church and town, and built it at his own expense. Immediately in front of the pulpit was either a long seat or a square inclosed pew for the deacons, who sat facing the congregation. This was usually a foot or two above the level of the other pews, and was reached by two or three steep, narrow steps. On a still higher plane was a pew for the ruling elders, when ruling elders there were. The magistrates also had a pew for their special use. What we now deem the best seats, those in the middle of the church, were in olden times the free seats.
Usually, on one side of the pulpit was a square pew for the minister's family. When there were twenty-six children in the family, as at least one New England parson could boast, and when ministers' families of twelve or fourteen children were far from unusual, it is no wonder that we find frequent votes to "inlarge the ministers wives pew the breadth of the alley," or to "take in the next pue to the ministers wives pue into her pue." The seats in the gallery were universally regarded in the early churches as the most exalted, in every sense, in the house, with the exception, of course, of the dignity-bearing foreseat and the few private pews.
It is easy to comprehend what a source of disappointed anticipation, heart-burning jealousy, offended dignity, unseemly pride, and bitter quarrelling this method of assigning scats, and ranking thereby, must have been in those little communities. How the goodwivcs must have hated the seating committee! Though it was expressly ordered, when the committee rendered their decision, that "the inhabitants are to rest silent and sett down satysfyed," who can still the tongue of an envious woman or an insulted man? Though they were Puritans, they were first of all men and women, and complaints and revolts were frequent. Judge Sewall records that one indignant dame "treated Captain Osgood very roughly on account of seating the meeting-house." To her the difference between a seat in the first and one in the second row was immeasurably great. It was not alone the Scribes and Pharisees who desired the highest seats in the synagogue.
It was found necessary at a very early date to "dignify the meeting," which was to make certain seats, though in different localities, equal in dignity; thus could peace and contented pride be partially restored. For instance, the seating committee in the Sutton church used their "best discresing," and voted that "the third seat below be equal in dignity with the foreseat in the front gallery, and the fourth seat below be equal in dignity with the foreseat in the side gallery," etc., thus making many seats of equal honor. Of course wives had to have seats of equal importance with those of their husbands, and each widow retained the dignity apportioned to her in her husband's lifetime. We can well believe that much "discresing" was necessary in dignifying as well as in seating. Often, after building a new meeting-house with all the painstaking and thoughtful judgment that could be shown, the dissensions over the seating lasted for years. The conciliatory fashion of "dignifying the seats" clung long in the Congregational churches of New England. In East Hartford and Windsor it was not abandoned until 1824.
Many men were unwilling to serve on these seating committees, and refused to "medle with the seating," protesting against it on account of the odium that was incurred, but they were seldom "let off." Even so influential and upright a man as Judge Sewall felt a dread of the responsibility and of the personal spleen he might arouse. He also feared in one case lest his seat-decisions might, if disliked, work against the ministerial peace of his son, who had been recently ordained as pastor of the church. Sometimes the difficulty was settled in this way: the entire church (or rather the male members) voted who should occupy the foreseat, or the highest pew, and the voted-in occupants of this seat of honor formed a committee, who in turn seated the others of the congregation.
In the town of Rowley, "age, office, and the amount paid toward building the meeting-house were considered when assigning seats." Other towns had very amusing and minute rules for seating. Each year of the age counted one degree. Military service counted eight degrees. The magistrate's office counted ten degrees. Every forty shillings paid in on the church rate counted one degree. We can imagine the ambitious Puritan adding up his degrees, and paying in forty shillings more in order to sit one seat above his neighbor who was a year or two older.
In Pittsfield, as early as the year 1765, the pews were sold by "vandoo" to the highest bidder, in order to stop the unceasing quarrels over the seating. In Windham, Connecticut, in 1762, the adoption of this pacificatory measure only increased the dissension when it was discovered that some miserable "bachelors who never paid for more than one head and a horse" had bid in several of the best pews in the meeting-house. In New London, two women, sisters-in-law, were seated side by side. Each claimed the upper or more dignified seat, and they quarrelled so fiercely over the occupation of it that they had to be brought before the town meeting.
In no way could honor and respect be shown more satisfactorily in the community than by the seat assigned in meeting. When Judge Sewall married his second wife, he writes with much pride: "Mr. Oliver in the names of the Overseers invites my Wife to sit in the foreseat. I thought to have brought her into my pue. I thankt him and the Overseers." His wife died in a few months, and he reproached himself for his pride in this honor, and left the seat which he had in the men's foreseat. "God in his holy Sovereignty put my wife out of the Fore Seat. I apprehended I had Cause to be ashamed of my Sin and loath myself for it, and retired into my Pue," which was of course less dignified than the foreseat.
Often, in thriving communities, the "pues" and benches did not afford seating room enough for the large number who wished to attend public worship, and complaints were frequent that many were "obliged to sit squeased on the stairs." Persons were allowed to bring chairs and stools into the meeting-house, and place them in the "alleys." These extra seats became often such encumbering nuisances that in many towns laws were passed abolishing and excluding them, or, as in Hadley, ordering them "back of the women's seats." In 1759 it was ordered in that town to "clear the Alleys of the meeting-house of chairs and other Incumbrances." Where the chairless people went is not told; perhaps they sat in the doorway, or, in the summer time, listened outside the windows. One forward citizen of Hardwicke had gradually moved his chair down the church alley, step by step, Sunday after Sunday, from one position of dignity to another still higher, until at last he boldly invaded the deacons' seat. When, in the year 1700, this honored position was forbidden him, in his chagrin and mortification he committed suicide by hanging.
The young men sat together in rows, and the young women in corresponding seats on the other side of the house. In 1677 the selectmen of Newbury gave permission to a few young women to build a pew in the gallery. It is impossible to understand why this should have roused the indignation of the bachelors of the town, but they were excited and angered to such a pitch that they broke a window, invaded the meeting-house, and "broke the pue in pessis." For this sacrilegious act they were fined £10 each, and sentenced to be whipped or pilloried. In consideration, however, of the fact that many of them had been brave soldiers, the punishment was omitted when they confessed and asked forgiveness. This episode is very comical; it exhibits the Puritan youth in such an ungallant and absurd light. When, ten years later, liberty was given to ten young men, who had sat in the "foure backer seats in the gallery," to build a pew in "the hindermost seat in the gallery behind the pulpit," it is not recorded that the Salem young women made any objection. In the Woburn church, the four daughters of one of the most respected families in the place received permission to build a pew in which to sit. Here also such indignant and violent protests were made by the young men that the selectmen were obliged to revoke the permission. It would be interesting to know the bachelors' discourteous objections to young women being allowed to own a pew, but no record of their reasons is given. Bachelors were so restricted and governed in the colonies that perhaps they resented the thought of any independence being allowed to single women. Single men could not live alone, but were forced to reside with some family to whom the court assigned them, and to do in all respects just what the court ordered. Thus, in olden times, a man had to marry to obtain his freedom. The only clue to a knowledge of the cause of the fierce and resentful objection of New England young men to permitting the young women of the various congregations to build and own a "maids pue" is contained in the record of the church of the town of Scotland, Connecticut. "An Hurlburt, Pashants and Mary Lazelle, Younes Bingham, prudenc Hurlburt and Jerusha meachem" were empowered to build a pew "provided they build within a year and raise ye pue no higher than the seat is on the Mens side." "Never ye Less," saith the chronicle, "ye above said have built said pue much higher than ye order, and if they do not lower the same within one month from this time the society comitte shall take said pue away." Do you wonder that the bachelors resented this towering "maids pue?" that they would not be scornfully looked down upon every Sabbath by women-folk, especially by a girl named "meachem"? Pashants and Younes and prudenc had to quickly come down from their unlawfully high church-perch and take a more humble seat, as befitted them; thus did their "vaulting ambition o'erleap itself and fall on the other side." Perhaps the Salem maids also built too high and imposing a pew. In Haverhill, in 1708, young women were permitted to build pews, provided they did not "damnify the Stairway." This somewhat profane-sounding restriction they heeded, and the Haverhill maids occupied their undamnifying "pue" unmolested. Medford young women, however, in 1701, when allowed only one side gallery for seats, while the young men were assigned one side and all the front gallery, made such an uproar that the town had to call a meeting, and restore to them their "woman's rights" in half the front gallery.
Infants were brought to church in their mothers' arms, and on summer days the young mothers often sat at the meeting-house door or in the porch,--if porch there were,--where, listening to the word of God, they could attend also to the wants of their babes. I have heard, too, of a little cage, or frame, which was to be seen in the early meeting-houses, for the purpose of holding children who were too young to sit alone,--poor Puritan babies! Little girls sat with their mothers or elder sisters on "crickets" within the pews; or if the family were over-numerous, the children and crickets exundated into "the alley without the pues." Often a row of little daughters of Zion sat on three-legged stools and low seats the entire length of the aisle,--weary, sleepy, young sentinels "without the gates."
The boys, the Puritan boys, those wild animals who were regarded with such suspicion, such intense disfavor, by all elderly Puritan eyes, and who were publicly stigmatized by the Duxbury elders as "ye wretched boys on ye Lords Day," were herded by themselves. They usually sat on the pulpit and gallery stairs, and constables or tithingmen were appointed to watch over them and control them. In Salem, in 1676, it was ordered that "all ye boyes of ye towne are and shall be appointed to sitt upon ye three pair of stairs in ye meeting-house on ye Lords Day, and Wm. Lord is appointed to look after ye boyes yt sitte upon ye pulpit stairs. Reuben Guppy is to look and order soe many of ye boyes as may be convenient, and if any are unruly, to present their names, as the law directs." Nowadays we should hardly seat boys in a group if we wished them to be orderly and decorous, and I fear the man "by the name of Guppy" found it no easy task to preserve order and due gravity among the Puritan boys in Salem meeting. In fact, the rampant boys behaved thus badly for the very reason that they were seated together instead of with their respective families; and not until the fashion was universal of each family sitting in a pew or group by itself did the boys in meeting behave like human beings rather than like mischievous and unruly monkeys.
In Stratford, in 1668, a tithingman was "appointed to watch over the youths of disorderly carriage, and see that they behave themselves comelie, and use such raps and blows as in his discretion meet."
I like to think of those rows of sober-faced Puritan boys seated on the narrow, steep pulpit stairs, clad in knee-breeches and homespun flapped coats, and with round, cropped heads, miniature likenesses in dress and countenance (if not in deportment) of their grave, stern, God-fearing fathers. Though they were of the sedate Puritan blood, they were boys, and they wriggled and twisted, and scraped their feet noisily on the sanded floor; and I know full well that the square-toed shoes of one in whom "original sin" waxed powerful, thrust many a sly dig in the ribs and back of the luckless wight who chanced to sit in front of and below him on the pulpit stairs. Many a dried kernel of Indian corn was surreptitiously snapped at the head of an unwary neighbor, and many a sly word was whispered and many a furtive but audible "snicker" elicited when the dread tithingman was "having an eye-out" and administering "discreet raps and blows" elsewhere.
One of these wicked youths in Andover was brought before the magistrate, and it was charged that he "Sported and played and by Indecent Gestures and Wry Faces caused laughter and misbehavior in the Beholders." The girls were not one whit better behaved. One of "ye tything men chosen of ye town of Norwich" reported that "Tabatha Morgus of s'd Norwich Did on ye 24th day February it being Sabbath on ye Lordes Day, prophane ye Lordes Day in ye meeting house of ye west society in ye time of ye forenoone service on s'd Day by her rude and Indecent Behaviour in Laughing and Playing in ye time of ye s'd Service which Doinges of ye s'd Tabatha is against ye peace of our Sovereign Lord ye King, his Crown and Dignity." Wanton Tabatha had to pay three shilings sixpence for her ill-timed mid-winter frolic. Perhaps she laughed to try to keep warm. Those who laughed at the misdemeanors of others were fined as well. Deborah Bangs, a young girl, in 1755 paid a fine of five shillings for "Larfing in the Wareham Meeting House in time of Public Worship," and a boy at the same time, for the same offence, paid a fine of ten shillings. He may have laughed louder and longer. In a law-book in which Jonathan Trumbull recorded the minor cases which he tried as justice of the peace, was found this entry: "His Majesties Tithing man entered complaint against Jona. and Susan Smith, that on the Lords Day during Divine Service, they didsmile." They were found guilty, and each was fined five shillings and costs,--poor smiling Susan and Jonathan.
Those wretched Puritan boys, those "sons of Belial," whittled, too, and cut the woodwork and benches of the meeting-house in those early days, just as their descendants have ever since hacked and cut the benches and desks in country schoolhouses,--though how they ever eluded the vigilant eye and ear of the ubiquitous tithingman long enough to whittle will ever remain an unsolved mystery of the past. This early forerunning evidence of what has become a characteristic Yankee trait and habit was so annoyingly and extensively exhibited in Medford, in 1729, that an order was passed to prosecute and punish "all who cut the seats in the meeting-house."
Few towns were content to have one tithingman and one staff, but ordered that there should be a guardian set over the boys in every corner of the meeting-house. In Hanover it was ordered "That there be some sticks set up in various places in the meeting-house, and fit persons by them andto use them." I doubt not that the sticks were well used, and Hanover boys were well rapped in meeting.
The Norwalk people come down through history shining with a halo of gentle lenity, for their tithingman was ordered to bear a short, small stick only, and he was "Desired to use it with clemency." However, if any boy proved "incoridgable," he could be "presented" before the elders; and perhaps he would rather have been treated as were Hartford boys by cruel Hartford church folk, who ordered that if "any boye shall be taken playing or misbehaving himself in the time of publick worship whether in the meeting-house or about the walls he shall be examined and punished at the present publickly before the assembly depart." Parson Chauncey, of Durham, when a boy misbehaved in meeting, and was "punched up" by the tithingman, often stopped in his sermon, called the godless young offender by name, and asked him to come to the parsonage the next day. Some very tender and beautiful lessons were taught to these Durham boys at these Monday morning interviews, and have descended to us in tradition; and the good Mr. Chauncey stands out a shining light of Christian patience and forbearance at a time when every other New England minister, from John Cotton down, preached and practised the stern repression and sharp correction of all children, and chanted together in solemn chorus, "Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child."
One vicious tithingman invented, and was allowed to exercise on the boys, a punishment which was the refinement of cruelty. He walked up to the laughing, sporting, or whittling boy, took him by the collar or the arm, led him ostentatiously across the meeting-house, and seated him by his shamefaced mother on the women's side. It was as if one grandly proud in kneebreeches should be forced to walk abroad in petticoats. Far rather would the disgraced boy have been whacked soundly with the heavy knob of the tithingman's staff; for bodily pain is soon forgotten, while mortifying abasement lingers long.
The tithingman could also take any older youth who misbehaved or "acted unsivill" in meeting from his manly seat with the grown men, and force him to sit again with the boys; "if any over sixteen are disorderly, they shall be ordered to said seats." Not only could these men of authority keep the boys in order during meeting, but they also had full control during the nooning, and repressed and restrained and vigorously corrected the luckless boys during the midday hours. When seats in the galleries grew to be regarded as inferior to seats and pews on the ground floor, the boys, who of course must have the worst place in the house, were relegated from the pulpit stairs to pews in the gallery, and these square, shut-off pews grew to be what Dr. Porter called "the Devil's play-houses," and turbulent outbursts were frequent enough.
The little boys still sat downstairs under their parents' watchful eyes. "No child under 10 alowed to go up Gailary." In the Sutherland church, if the big boys (who ought to have known better) "behaved unseemly," one of the tithing-men who "took turns to set in the Galary" was ordered "to bring Such Bois out of the Galary & set them before the Deacon's Seat" with the small boys. In Plainfield, Connecticut, the "pestigeous" boys managed to invent a new form of annoyance,--they "damnified the glass;" and a church regulation had to be passed to prevent, or rather to try to prevent them from "opening the windows or in any way damnifying the glass." It was doubtless hot work scuffling and wrestling in the close, shut-in pews high up under the roof, and they naturally wished to cool down by opening or breaking the windows. Grown persons could not inconsiderately open the church windows either. "The Constables are desired totake noticof the persons that open the windows in the tyme of publick worship." No rheumatic-y draughts, no bronchitis-y damps, no pure air was allowed to enter the New England meeting-house. The church doubtless took a vote before it allowed a single window to be opened.
In Westfield, Massachusetts, the boys became so abominably rampant that the church formally decided "that if there is not a Reformation Respecting the Disorders in the Pews built on the Great Beam in the time of Publick Worship the comite can pul it down."
The fashion of seating the boys in pews by themselves was slow of abolishment in many of the churches. In Windsor, Connecticut, "boys' pews" were a feature of the church until 1845. As years rolled on, the tithingmen became restricted in their authority: they could no longer administer "raps and blows;" they were forced to content themselves with loud rappings on the floor, and pointing with a staff or with a condemning finger at the misdemeanant. At last the deacons usurped these functions, and if rapping and pointing did not answer the purpose of establishing order (if the boy "psisted"), led the stubborn offender out of meeting; and they had full authority soundly to thrash the "wretched boy" on the horse-block. Rev. Dr. Dakin tells the story that, hearing a terrible noise and disturbance while he was praying in a church in Quincy, he felt constrained to open his eyes to ascertain the cause thereof; and he beheld a red-haired boy firmly clutching the railing on the front edge of the gallery, while a venerable deacon as firmly clutched the boy. The young rebel held fast, and the correcting deacon held fast also, until at last the balustrade gave way, and boy, deacon, and railing fell together with a resounding crash. Then, rising from the wooden debris, the thoroughly subdued boy and the triumphant deacon left the meeting-house to finish their little affair; and unmistakable swishing sounds, accompanied by loud wails and whining protestations, were soon heard from the region of the horse-sheds. Parents never resented such chastisings; it was expected, and even desired, that boys should be whipped freely by every school-master and person of authority who chose so to do.
In some old church-orders for seating, boys were classed with negroes, and seated with them; but in nearly all towns the negroes had seats by themselves. The black women were all seated on a long bench or in an inclosed pew labelled "B.W.," and the negro men in one labelled "B.M." One William Mills, a jesting soul, being asked by a pompous stranger where he could sit in meeting, told the visitor that he was welcome to sit in Bill Mills's pew, and that it was marked "B.M." The man, who chanced to be ignorant of the local custom of marking the negro seats, accepted the kind invitation, and seated himself in the black men's pew, to the delight of Bill Mills, the amusement of the boys, the scandal of the elders, and his own disgust.
Sometimes a little pew or short gallery was built high up among the beams and joists over the staircase which led to the first gallery, and was called the "swallows' nest," or the "roof pue," or the "second gallery." It was reached by a steep, ladder-like staircase, and was often assigned to the negroes and Indians of the congregation.
Often "ye seat between ye Deacons seat and ye pulpit is for persons hard of hearing to sett in." In nearly every meeting a bench or pew full of aged men might be seen near the pulpit, and this seat was called, with Puritan plainness of speech, the "Deaf Pew." Some very deaf church members (when the boys were herded elsewhere) sat on the pulpit stairs, and even in the pulpit, alongside the preacher, where they disconcertingly upturned their great tin ear-trumpets directly in his face. The persistent joining in the psalm-singing by these deaf old soldiers and farmers was one of the bitter trials which the leader of the choir had to endure.
The singers' seats were usually in the galleries; sometimes upon the ground floor, in the "hind-row on either side." Occasionally the choir sat in two rows of seats that extended quite across the floor of the house, in front of the deacons' seat and the pulpit. The men singers then sat facing the congregation, while the women singers faced the pulpit. Between them ran a long rack for the psalm-books. When they sang they stood up, and bawled and fugued in each other's faces. Often a square pew was built for the singers, and in the centre of this enclosure was a table, on which were laid, when at rest, the psalm-books. When they sang, the choir thus formed a hollow square, as does any determined band, for strength.
One other seat in the old Puritan meeting-house, a seat of gloom, still throws its darksome shadow down through the years,--the stool of repentance. "Barbarous and cruel punishments" were forbidden by the statutes of the new colony, but on this terrible soul-rack the shrinking, sullen, or defiant form of some painfully humiliated man or woman sat, crushed, stunned, stupefied by overwhelming disgrace, through the long Christian sermon; cowering before the hard, pitiless gaze of the assembled and godly congregation, and the cold rebuke of the pious minister's averted face; bearing on the poor sinful head a deep-branding paper inscribed in "Capitall Letters" with the name of some dark or mysterious crime, or wearing on the sleeve some strange and dread symbol, or on the breast a scarlet letter.
Let us thank God that these soul-blasting and hope-killing exposures--so degrading to the criminal, so demoralizing to the community,--these foul, in-human blots on our fair and dearly loved Puritan Lord's Day, were never frequent, nor did the form of punishment obtain for a long time. In 1681 two women were sentenced to sit during service on a high stool in the middle alley of the Salem meeting-house, having on their heads a paper bearing the name of their crime; and a woman in Agamenticus at about the same date was ordered "to stand in a white sheet publicly two several Sabbath-Days with the mark of her offence on her forehead." These are the latest records of this punishment that I have chanced to see.
Thus, from old church and town records, we plainly discover that each laic, deacon, elder, criminal, singer, and even the ungodly boy had his alloted place as absolutely assigned to him in the old meeting-house as was the pulpit to the parson. Much has been said in semi-ridicule of this old custom of "seating" and "dignifying," yet it did not in reality differ much from our modern way of selling the best pews to whoever will pay the most. Perhaps the old way was the better, since, in the early churches, age, education, dignity, and reputation were considered as well as wealth.
The most grotesque, the most extraordinary, the most highly colored figure in the dull New England church-life was the tithingman. This fairly burlesque creature impresses me always with a sense of unreality, of incongruity, of strange happening, like a jesting clown in a procession of monks, like a strain of low comedy in the sober religious drama of early New England Puritan life; so out of place, so unreal is this fussy, pompous, restless tithingman, with his fantastic wand of office fringed with dangling foxtails,--creaking, bustling, strutting, peering around the quiet meeting-house, prodding and rapping the restless boys, waking the drowsy sleepers; for they slept in country churches in the seventeenth century, notwithstanding dread of fierce correction, just as they nod and doze and softly puff, unawakened and unrebuked, in village churches throughout New England in the nineteenth century.
This absurd and distorted type of the English church beadle, this colonial sleep banisher, was equipped with a long staff, heavily knobbed at one end, with which he severely and pitilessly rapped the heads of the too sleepy men, and the too wide-awake boys. From the other end of this wand of office depended a long foxtail, or a hare's-foot, which he softly thrust in the faces of the sleeping Priscillas, Charitys, and Hopestills, and which gently brushed and tickled them into reverent but startled wakefulness.
One zealous but too impetuous tithingman in his pious ardor of office inadvertently applied the wrong end, the end with the heavy knob, the masculine end, to a drowsy matron's head; and for this severely ungallant mistake he was cautioned by the ruling elders to thereafter use "more discresing and less heist."
Another over-watchful Newbury "awakener" rapped on the head a nodding man who protested indignantly that he was wide-awake, and was only bowing in solemn assent and approval of the minister's arguments. Roger Scott, of Lynn, in 1643 struck the tithingman who thus roughly and suddenly wakened him; and poor sleepy and bewildered Roger, who is branded through all time as "a common sleeper at the publick exercise," was, for this most naturally resentful act, but also most shockingly grave offence, soundly whipped, as a warning both to keep awake and not to strike back in meeting.
Obadiah Turner, of Lynn, gives in his Journal a sad, sad disclosure of total depravity which was exposed by one of these sudden church-awakenings, and the story is best told in the journalist's own vivid words:--
"June 3, 1616.--Allen Bridges hath bin chose to wake ye sleepers in meeting. And being much proude of his place, must needs have a fox taile fixed to ye ende of a long staff wherewith he may brush ye faces of them yt will have napps in time of discourse, likewise a sharpe thorne whereby he may pricke such as be most sound. On ye last Lord his day, as hee strutted about ye meeting-house, he did spy Mr. Tomlins sleeping with much comfort, hys head kept steadie by being in ye corner, and his hand grasping ye rail. And soe spying, Allen did quickly thrust his staff behind Dame Ballard and give him a grievous prick upon ye hand. Whereupon Mr. Tomlins did spring vpp mch above ye floore, and with terrible force strike hys hand against ye wall; and also, to ye great wonder of all, prophanlie exclaim in a loud voice, curse ye wood-chuck, he dreaming so it seemed yt a wood-chuck had seized and bit his hand. But on coming to know where he was, and ye greate scandall he had committed, he seemed much abashed, but did not speak. And I think he will not soon again goe to sleepe in meeting."
How clear the picture! Can you not see it?--the warm June sunlight streaming in through the narrow, dusty windows of the old meeting-house; the armed watcher at the door; the Puritan men and women in their sad-colored mantles seated sternly upright on the hard narrow benches; the black-gowned minister, the droning murmur of whose sleepy voice mingles with the out-door sounds of the rustle of leafy branches, the song of summer birds, the hum of buzzing insects, and the muffled stamping of horses' feet; the restless boys on the pulpit-stairs; the tired, sleeping Puritan with his head thrown back in the corner of the pew; the vain, strutting, tithingman with his fantastic and thornéd staff of office; and then--the sudden, electric wakening, and the consternation of the whole staid and pious congregation at such terrible profanity in the house of God. Ah!--it was not two hundred and forty years ago; when I read the quaint words my Puritan blood stirs my drowsy brain, and I remember it all well, just as I saw it last summer in June.
Another catastrophe from too fierce zeal on the part of the tithingman is recorded. An old farmer, worn out with a hard Saturday's work at sheep-washing, fell asleep ere the hour-glass had once been turned. Though he was a man of dignity, for he sat in his own pew, he could not escape the rod of the pragmatical tithingman. Being rudely disturbed, but not wholly wakened, the bewildered sheep-farmer sprung to his feet, seized his astonished and mortified wife by the shoulders and shook her violently, shouting at the top of his voice, "Haw back! haw back! Stand still, will ye?" Poor goodman and goodwife! many years elapsed ere they recovered from that keen disgrace.
The ministers encouraged and urged the tithingmen to faithfully perform their allotted work. One early minister "did not love sleepers in ye meeting-house, and would stop short in ye exercise and call pleasantlie to wake ye sleepers, and once of a warm Summer afternoon he did take hys hat off from ye pegg in ye beam, and put it on, saying he would go home and feed his fowles and come back again, and maybe their sleepe would be ended, and they readie to hear ye remainder of hys discourse." Another time he suggested that they might like better the Church of England service of sitting down and standing up, and we can be sure that this "was competent to keepe their eyes open for a twelvemonth."
All this was in the church of Mr. Whiting, of Lynn, a somewhat jocose Puritan,--if jocularity in a Puritan is not too anomalous an attribute to have ever existed. We can be sure that there was neither sleeping nor jesting allusion to such an irreverence in Mr. Mather's, Mr. Welde's, or Mr. Cotton's meetings. In many rigidly severe towns, as in Portsmouth in 1662 and in Boston in 1667, it was ordered by the selectmen as a proper means of punishment that a "cage be made or some other means invented for such as sleepe on the Lord's Daie." Perhaps they woke the offender up and rudely and summarily dragged him out and caged him at once and kept him thus prisoned throughout the nooning,--a veritable jail-bird.
A rather unconventional and eccentric preacher in Newbury awoke one sleeper in a most novel manner. The first name of the sleeping man was Mark, and the preacher in his sermon made use of these Biblical words: "I say unto you, mark the perfect man and behold the upright." But in the midst of his low, monotonous sermon-voice he roared out the word "mark" in a loud shout that brought the dozing Mark to his feet, bewildered but wide awake.
Mr. Moody, of York, Maine, employed a similar device to awaken and mortify the sleepers in meeting. He shouted "Fire, fire, fire!" and when the startled and blinking men jumped up, calling out "Where?" he roared back in turn, "In hell, for sleeping sinners." Rev. Mr. Phillips, of Andover, in 1755, openly rebuked his congregation for "sleeping away a great part of the sermon;" and on the Sunday following an earthquake shock which was felt throughout New England, he said he hoped the "Glorious Lord of the Sabbath had given them such a shaking as would keep them awake through one sermon-time." Other and more autocratic parsons did not hesitate to call out their sleeping parishioners plainly by name, sternly telling them also to "Wake up!" A minister in Brunswick, Maine, thus pointedly wakened one of his sweet-sleeping church-attendants, a man of some dignity and standing in the community, and received the shocking and tautological answer, "Mind your own business, and go on with your sermon."
The women would sometimes nap a little without being discovered. "Ye women may sometimes sleepe and none know by reason of their enormous bonnets. Mr. Whiting doth pleasantlie say from ye pulpit hee doth seeme to be preaching to stacks of straw with men among them."
From this seventeenth-century comment upon the size of the women's bonnets, it may be seen that objections to women's overwhelming and obscuring headgear in public assemblies are not entirely complaining protests of modern growth. Other records refer to the annoyance from the exaggerated size of bonnets. In 1769 the church in Andover openly "put to vote whether the parish Disapprove of the Female sex sitting with their Hats on in the Meeting-house in time of Divine Service as being Indecent." The parish did Disapprove, with a capital D, for the vote passed in the affirmative. There is no record, however, to tell whether the Indecent fashion was abandoned, but I warrant no tithingman was powerful enough to make Andover women take off their proudly worn Sunday bonnets if they did not want to. Another town voted that it was the "Town's Mind" that the women should take off their bonnets and "hang them on the peggs," as did the men their headgear. But the Town's Mind was not a Woman's Mind; and the big-bonnet wearers, vain though they were Puritans, did as they pleased with their own bonnets. And indeed, in spite of votes and in spite of expostulations, the female descendants of the Puritans, through constantly recurring waves of fashion, have ever since been indecently wearing great obscuring hats and bonnets in public assemblies, even up to the present day.
The tithingman had other duties than awakening the sleepers and looking after "the boyes that playes and rapping those boyes,"--in short, seeing that every one was attentive in meeting except himself,--and the duties and powers of the office varied in different communities. Several of these officers were appointed in each parish. In Newbury, in 1688, there were twenty tithingmen, and in Salem twenty-five. They were men of authority, not only on Sunday, but throughout the entire week. Each had several neighboring families (usually ten, as the word "tithing" would signify) under his charge to watch during the week, to enforce the learning of the catechism at home, especially by the children, and sometimes he heard them "Say their Chatachize." These families he also watched specially on the Sabbath, and reported whether all the members thereof attended public worship. Not content with mounting guard over the boys on Sundays, he also watched on weekdays to keep boys and "all persons from swimming in the water." Do you think his duties were light in July and August, when school was out, to watch the boys of ten families? One man watching one family cannot prevent such "violations of the peace" in country towns now-a-days. He sometimes inspected the "ordinaries" and made complaint of any disorders which he there discovered, and gave in the names of "idle tiplers and gamers," and he could warn the tavern-keeper to sell no more liquor to any toper whom he knew or fancied was drinking too heavily. Josselyn complained bitterly that during his visit to New England in 1663 at "houses of entertainment called ordinaries into which a stranger went, he was presently followed by one appointed to that office who would thrust himself into his company uninvited, and if he called for more drink than the officer thought in his judgment he could soberly bear away, he would presently countermand it, and appoint the proportion beyond which he could not get one drop." The tithingman had a "spetial eye-out" on all bachelors, who were also carefully spied upon by the constables, deacons, elders, and heads of families in general. He might, perhaps, help to collect the ministerial rate, though his principal duty was by no means the collecting of tithes. He "worned peple out of ye towne." This warning was not at all because the new-comers were objectionable or undesired, but was simply a legal form of precaution, so that the parish would never be liable for the keeping of the "worned" ones in case they thereafter became paupers. He administered the "oath of fidelity" to new inhabitants. The tithingman also watched to see that "no young people walked abroad on the eve of the Sabbath,"--that is, on a Saturday night. He also marked and reported all those "who lye at home," and others who "prophanely behaved, lingered without dores at meeting time on the Lordes Daie," all the "sons of Belial strutting about, setting on fences, and otherwise desecrating the day." These last two classes of offenders were first admonished by the tithingman, then "Sett in stocks," and then cited before the Court. They were also confined in the cage on the meeting-house green, with the Lord's Day sleepers. The tithingman could arrest any who walked or rode at too fast a pace to and from meeting, and he could arrest any who "walked or rode unnecessarily on the Sabath." Great and small alike were under his control, as this notice from the "Columbian Centinel" of December, 1789, abundantly proves. It is entitled "The President and the Tything man:"--
"The President, on his return to New York from his late tour through Connecticut, having missed his way on Saturday, was obliged to ride a few miles on Sunday morning in order to gain the town at which he had previously proposed to have attended divine service. Before he arrived however he was met by a Tything man, who commanding him to stop, demanded the occasion of his riding; and it was not until the President had informed him of every circumstance and promised to go no further than the town intended that the Tything man would permit him to proceed on his journey."
Various were the subterfuges to outwit the tithingman and elude his vigilance on the Sabbath. We all remember the amusing incident in "Oldtown Folks." A similar one really happened. Two gay young sparks driving through the town on the Sabbath were stopped by the tithingman; one offender said mournfully in excuse of his Sabbath travel, "My grandmother is lying dead in the next town." Being allowed to drive on, he stood up in his wagon when at a safe distance and impudently shouted back, "And she's been lying dead in the graveyard there for thirty years."
Thus it may be seen that the ancient tithingman was pre-eminently a generalsnook, to use an old and expressive word,--an informer, both in and out of meeting,--a very necessary, but somewhat odious, and certainly at times very absurd officer. He was in a degree a constable, a selectman, a teacher, a tax-collector, an inspector, a sexton, a home-watcher, and above all, a Puritan Bumble, whose motto wasHie et ubique. He was, in fact, a general law-enforcer and order-keeper, whose various duties, wherever still necessary and still performed, are now apportioned to several individuals. The ecclesiastical functions and authority of the tithingman lingered long after the civil powers had been removed or had gradually passed away from his office. Persons are now living who in their early and unruly youth were rapped at and pointed at by a New England tithingman when they laughed or were noisy in meeting.