Home Massachusetts The Puritans Ban Gambling and a Whole Lot of Other Things

The Puritans Ban Gambling and a Whole Lot of Other Things

Such as fancy clothes

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22 comments

The Puritans had barely arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony when they banned gambling. And then they banned a lot of other things. Following the path of similar countries who at the time banned gambling and casinos, the Puritans took a page from the playbook of Italy – where casinos were also outlawed, according to recent data from Italian online gambling statistics authority Stranieri.com.

On March 22, 1631, the General Court issued the following ordinance:

Must have missed church on Sunday

Must have missed church on Sunday, or went dancing after services

It is … ordered that all persons whatsoever that have cards, dice or tables in their houses, shall make away with them before the next court under pain of punishment.

More social control soon followed. Seven months after they outlawed gaming, the Massachusetts Puritans decided to punish adultery with death (though the death penalty was rare). They banned fancy clothing, living with Indians and smoking in public.

Missing Sunday services would land you in the stocks. Celebrating Christmas would cost you five shillings. The only holidays they celebrated were Election Day; Commencement Day, to celebrate college graduation; and Training Day, which involved military exercises. Oh, and Thanksgiving.

Young single men were especially suspect.  Just to live in a community, they needed the express permission of the town if they weren’t married or had no servant or if they weren’t a public officer. The penalty for breaking that law was 20 shillings a week.

Haunting Fear of Someone’s Happiness

No wonder H.L. Mencken said, “Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”

H.L. Mencken

Mencken, in his Book of Prefaces, attacked the Puritans in an essay, “Puritanism as a Literary Force.” In it, he argued the Puritans banned ideas–other people’s ideas, that is.

The Puritan’s utter lack of aesthetic sense, his distrust of all romantic emotion, his unmatchable intolerance of opposition, his unbreakable belief in his own bleak and narrow views, his savage cruelty of attack, his lust for relentless and barbarous persecution – these things have put an almost unbearable burden up on the exchange of ideas in the United States.

One idea the Puritans censored was that anyone should spend Sunday afternoon playing or watching sports. In England, King James I had tried to counteract Puritan influence by ordering his Book of Sports read in every church. The book encouraged certain fun activities after Sunday services. Those included archery, leaping, vaulting, Morris dances and Whitsun-ales.

The Book of Sports also said people could either conform or leave. So thousands of Puritans sailed to New England between 1620 and 1640.

Puritan Fun, Sort Of

Thomas Morton went to his grief breaking Puritan rules.  A free-thinking entrepreneur, he set up a trading post in the future Quincy, Mass. He called his little settlement “Merrymount.” He horrified his neighbors in Plymouth by consorting with native women.

portrait

Supposedly a portrait of Myles Standish painted in 1625, but first published in 1885 and of questionable authenticity.

One May Day Morton went too far. He put up a Maypole, something the Puritans abhorred. Myles Standish led a party of armed men to Merrymount, seized Morton and put him in chains. Then he chopped down the Maypole.

Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote about it in his story, The Maypole of Merrymount. “Jollity and gloom were contending for an empire,” he wrote.

To be fair, the Puritans did have some fun. They allowed hunting, fishing and archery, and they held athletic contests (never on Sunday though).  They drank beer, wine and liquor, but not to excess. The Town of New Haven in 1656 required that anyone licensed to serve alcohol had to make sure his customers didn’t get drunk, didn’t drink past 9 pm and didn’t ‘continue tipling’ for more than an hour.

The Puritans had a reason for their dour outlook. They viewed life’s pleasures as nothing but chimeras, especially when compared to the happiness of heaven.

Richard Baxter, after Robert White painting,(1670). No Maypole for him.

Puritan theologian Richard Baxter explained,

I cannot but look upon all the glory and dignity of this world, lands and lordships, crowns and kingdoms, even as on some brain-sick, beggarly fellow, that borrows fine clothes, and plays, the part of a king or lord for an hour on a stage, and then comes down, and the sport is ended, and they are beggars again.

Puritanism Lingers

The Puritan sensibility over time loosened gradually, though not completely.   In 1756, the priggish John Adams wrote, “Let others waste their bloom of life at the card or billiard table among rakes and fools.”

Christmas didn’t win wide acceptance in New England until after the Civil War.

And in the 20th century, critics would call Boston-born Bobby Kennedy “the last Puritan.” They viewed him as ruthless, idealistic and not a lot of fun. One FBI agent recounted how J. Edgar Hoover tried to catch him in an indiscretion. “We used to watch him at parties, where he would order one glass o scotch and still be sipping from the same glass two hours later.”

With thanks to The Puritan Tradition in America, 1620-1730, edited by Alden Vaughan. This story was updated in 2024.

22 comments

Joan Vaughn March 22, 2014 - 5:51 pm

Bah Humbug. The Puritans were their brother’s keepers.

Bobo Leach March 22, 2014 - 5:53 pm

A whole hour of tippling? Nice.

Stephen Bowden March 22, 2014 - 5:56 pm

they sound a lot like some other extremists that are around these days

Roy Littlefield March 22, 2014 - 6:23 pm

They should bring back the pillory as a means of punishment.

Molly Landrigan March 22, 2014 - 7:22 pm

That might be a good idea, Roy.

Lori Jones March 22, 2014 - 8:18 pm

One way to get a good laugh… Looking back at my “wonderful” Puritan ancestors! (they were nuts!) 😛

Bill Jones March 22, 2014 - 11:07 pm

This country was founded on Sharia law, yet the populists are loath to admit it.

Deva DeRocher Barron March 23, 2014 - 2:51 am

I agree with Roy and Molly! In person name and shame in the village green /city center!

Linda Brayton March 23, 2014 - 7:21 am

A “war against” single young men? Huh.

Daniel Mitchel March 23, 2014 - 11:17 am

As usual, Puritans get no respect, even from writers from a historical association who should know better that to pander to popular perception. New England society did not have the resources to put 5% of their citizens in prison, and extort political contributions from prison guards or outsource and privatize the prison if the contributions don’t materialize. So they put people in stocks. They also let them out of the stocks. Let me be blunt: Puritan critics have no clue what the culture of England’s ruling class was doing to English society. The folk’s who left “Old England” for New were trying to return to how they thought nature and the creator intended humans to live. They were desperately poor and working hard to carve a civilization out of wilderness. Trotting out H.L. Mencken to back up the anti Puritan narrative is the easiest parlor critic trick of all. NEHGS you can do better. In hopes of better to come. Daniel Mitchel.

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