Impurest of Puritans, or Old Goat Sows Wild Oats
William Bucknam: 1601-1679
Sarah Knower: 1622-1679?
We tend to assume the Puritans were stuffy, prim figures,
obsessed with the Bible and the dictates of their faith. Books like The Scarlet Letter prompted us to
believe that adultery was rare, and swiftly and cruelly punished when it did
occur. So I was surprised to discover my ninth-great-grandfather, Puritan
immigrant William Bucknam, was prominently featured in a book called Sex in Middlesex, a historic study of
sexuality in Puritan Middlesex County Massachusetts. It turns out that William
and his second wife Sarah Knower Bucknam were far from pure and faithful
Puritans. They appear to have been wildly flirtatious at best, and promiscuous
at worst.
William was already forty years old when he married his
second wife, Sarah Knower, in 1641. He may have been motivated in part by his
wife’s dowry as he was in debt after his first wife’s death. He may also have
been motivated by her youth—she was only nineteen or twenty years old. While
the marriage may have begun as a business-like arrangement, the couple obviously
got along well enough to have at least eight children over the course of the next
eighteen years.
William amassed a considerable amount of land in Malden, Massachusetts, proudly
noting that he purchased all of it himself rather than receiving land grants
like more highly born and well-connected colonists. He was a carpenter, and had
additional business interests that led him to travel frequently from Malden to
the Charlestown area.
 |
| Image of Plimouth Plantation, modern re-imagining of what the original colony looked like |
Sarah apparently got a bit lonely when he was away from
home. She may have also longed for the attentions of a younger, more vigorous
man. William and Sarah had a lodger living in their home for some months in
1652, a man named Robert Burden. Sarah apparently took a shine to the man. He
eventually set up his own home, and took in his own lodgers, the unpleasantly
inquisitive Jonathan and Elizabeth Webb, who spent about a year living in his
home.
According to Sex in
Middlesex, Robert Burden and Sarah Bucknam were prosecuted in court for
adultery in 1653. The Webbs were two of the primary witnesses against them,
testifying that “they observed that Sarah came often to Burden’s ‘by day &
by night’ and Robert often went out of the house with her.” He would go to
visit her with the excuse that Sarah could wash his clothes and cook the
occasional meal, even though Mrs. Webb offered to handle those chores. Mrs.
Webb claimed that Sarah had her carry notes to Burden asking him to spend the
night because William was out of town.
Sarah’s own sister testified that she wondered at Sarah and
Robert’s familiarity with each other when she visited overnight at the Bucknam
house and found him there as well. Sarah’s neighbor Alice Larkin recounted Sarah holding
up a garlic bulb and saying “looke here is a short neckt gerle is she not like
Robert Burden,” bawdily implying the bulb resembled his sex organs and that she
was familiar with their appearance. Referring to them as “short neckt” doesn’t
sound very flattering, however!
Other witnesses came forward. Five women expressed
suspicions about what the pair were up to in a haystack, two others claim to
have seen “familiarities among some sumac trees” and another woman alleged they
traveled together by boat from Boston, apparently up to no good. There seemed
to be no end of townspeople willing to assume the worst about the pair.
Sarah had her defenders, including her husband William, who
apparently retaliated in part by filing charges of defamation against some of
the accusers.
One witness for the defense was assistant deacon and elder
of the church, Joseph Hills, who proclaimed that the “suspected encounters “
were innocent and that Sarah had a good character. That got Mr. Hills in
trouble with other church leaders, one sarcastically noting that “Mr. Hills is
one day in the Deacones chair and the next day pleading baudy business (sic) in
the court; will you say he is an honest man? Is he fit to sit in the place of a
ruling elder that will plead the cause of rogues?” Hills sued his critic for
slander.
The whole incident seems to have been fueled by a village
feud amongst the women concerning a previous minister, who had been replaced,
to the dismay of many of his female congregants. The women actually wrote a
letter in protest of his dismissal. Sarah and several of her accusers signed
the letter, but Sarah fell out with them later, and they turned on her. A new
minister even attempted to mediate between them, begging one not to “defame”
Sarah, which implies that some of the charges may have been exaggerated.
The case against Sarah Bucknam and Robert Burden was
eventually settled on March 5, 1653. They were not convicted of adultery, but
Burden and Sarah were required to post bonds to the court to ensure they would
“abstain from all private meetings.”
 |
| A Puritan gathering, from “New England, old and new; a brief review of some historical and industrial incidents in the Puritan “New English Canaan,” still the Land of promise.” via Wikimedia; public domain |
Nine years later, it was William Bucknam’s turn to be in the hot seat. He was tried and convicted of “shamefull lasciviousness in his words and actions towards [fourteen] married women” over a period of over a decade. Once again, there were multiple witnesses and multiple stories. For example:
--He told Elizabeth Webb (yes, the woman who accused his
wife) that she was a “pretty roague and made his hart leap in his britches.”
--he lured Rebecca Green to the local mill and offered her
two bushels of wheat—which didn’t even belong to him—if “he could have his will
there”, assuring her that such adultery wasn’t evil.
--He promised Elizabeth Lareby that half an hour with him
would cure her infertility. She said he “did proffer to put his hands under my
cotes and lay hold of me.”
--Elizabeth Payne reported that he “puld me into his lapp
and there held me and would not let me goe but kist me severall tymes.”
--He caught Hannah Stowers partially undressed, and assured
her that “he had seen women undrest before.”
--Hannah Hills said he told her he “had come to see how rich
your husband is.” Presumably he wasn’t referring to money.
The women all professed to be horrified by him and his
unwelcome attentions. Considering the incidents occurred over a period of
several years, they don’t seem to have seen him as a real threat or a serious
criminal as they didn’t report him earlier. As author Thompson says, “Bucknam
seems to have been more of a nuisance than a menace, snatching kisses, feeling
legs, grabbing on to laps or round waists…his tastes proved catholic:
newlyweds, grandmothers, gentlewomen, church sisters, or goodwives were all
fair game.” (page 133)
The women seem to have been able to fend him off quite
easily by yelling at him. Rebecca Greene chided, “Will such an ould man as you
be so foolish and so wicked. Are you not ashamed to doe soe.” Mary Tufts said, “I
bid him goe to his owne wife.”
Just as William came to his wife Sarah’s defense years
earlier, Sarah came to his defense. She attacked one of his accusers, saying
the woman hit him in the head with pots, tore meat out of his hands as he tried
to eat, and yanked a chair out from under him, and mocked him as an “ould
blackbeard”. “It was an unseemlie thing for her to behave herself to such a
ancient man that was ould enough to be her father.” Sarah argued.
 |
| Puritan punishment for adultery |
She saw the charges as part of a larger plot against her
family. “This hath been a thinge searched out,” she told the court. She felt
his bawdy talk and roaming hands were being made into something far more
sinister.
Her efforts to defend her husband were in vain. He was fined
twenty-five pounds, which was a large sum of money in those days. However, the punishment could have been far
worse. A Sarah Buckman, misidentified by Thompson as being William Bucknam’s
daughter-in-law (her husband John was a Buckman, not Bucknam) of Boston was
convicted of “unlawfull and uncivill accompanying” with a man named Peter Cole.
The pair were caught in bed together, but apparently still clothed, so had not
committed adultery. However, just for being caught in a compromising situation,
they were placed in the stocks and given 39 lashes apiece. I would say “ould
blackbeard” William got off lightly in comparison!
 |
| Puritan punishment: whipping and stocks |
Sarah and William stayed married until his death on March 28,
1679. He provided for her in his will, referring to her as his “beloved wife.” The
date of her death is unknown.
One reviewer of the Thompson book noted her relief that
William, described as “one of the most notorious village Lotharios”, wasn’t one
of her ancestors. In contrast, I’m delighted he’s one of my ancestors. He
sounds like he was a real personality—yes, he was bawdy and rude, but he seems
to have had a real zest for life. While he made advances to 14 women in his
tiny community, at least he was never accused of anything more than unwelcome
flirtation, kisses and a little groping. I see him as a bit of a pervert, but
not a true predator. And as for poor Sarah, it sounds like she had a little
mid-life romance to brighten up what must have been a tough and exhausting
life.
Sarah and William may not have been the purest of the Puritans, but they
were certainly interesting and were probably a source of great amusement for
their neighbors in Malden, Massachusetts! They are an unforgettable branch in my family tree.
Sources:
Sex in Middlesex: Popular
Mores in a Massachusetts County, 1649-1699. Roger Thompson. Amherst, Mass.:
University of Massachusetts Press, 1986; reprint 2012).
The History of Malden
Massachusetts, 1633-1785, Deloraine P Corey, 1836-1910
No comments:
Post a Comment