THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
appear as early as the Heptarchy. Ina reigned king of Wessex from 688 to his abdication in 725. He began as a warrior, then became a 4. Early statesman and law-giver, and died a English religious recluse. 'When he had added Legislation, much to his kingdom by war upon his neighbors he gave a code of laws, known as the " West Saxon code," in which was a law for observance of Sunday which prohibited all work on that day. In the east of England, the kingdom of Kent, the home of Augustine and the field of his success, it is strange that there is no earlier record of Sunday laws. Perhaps ecclesiastical canons were deemed enough. But in the time of Withred, king of Kent, in 696, a statute was enacted forbidding labor from Saturday at sunset to Sunday at sunset. This recalls an early New England custom as to the beginning and ending of Sunday observance. The same law made free the slave who worked on Sunday by his lord's command, and enslaved the free man who worked without his lord's command. Other severe penalties are mentioned. In 747 Eidelbald, king of the Mercians, enacted the observance of the Lord's day by all, and forbade all business, journeys, and meetings. Before 900, Alfred, king of Wessex, and " over-lord " of the Saxon kingdom of England, had enacted a law for Sunday observance. Earlier than 930, the kingdom of the West Saxons and Mercia having been united, Athelstan the king, also " over-lord " of the other kingdoms, by his statute forbade all merchandizing on the Lord's day. Edgar, king of the same realm 959-975, enacted a further Sunday law forbidding Sunday trading, folkmotes (meetings of the people), heathen songs, and devils games on that day, and he is said to have enacted that Sunday began at three on Saturday afternoon and continued until daybreak of Monday. Ethelred, king of the same kingdom 978-1016, enacted that all " hunting bouts," trafficking, courts, and worldly works were forbidden on Sunday; yet allowed courts to sit on occasions of necessity. Canute, the first Danish king of England, came to that throne in 1017, and reenacted Sunday laws forbidding hunting and worldly work on Sunday, and also marketing, except for necessity, and forbade capital punishment on that day. The Saxon dynasty was restored in 1040, and Edward the Confessor about 1056 enlarged the Sunday law of Canute. Lord Mansfield, in a decision of a lawsuit (Swann vs. Browne, 3 Burrow, 1599) which involved the question whether a court could make a valid judgment on a Sunday, is authority for the statement that both William the Conqueror and Henry II. ratified and confirmed the canons of the councils of Tribury and Saint Medoro and the ordinances of Edward the Confessor as to Sunday observance, and decreed that the codes of Justinian on Sunday observance were the law of England. Successive acts of parliament on Sunday observance became the law of England (e.g.: 1354 a.d., the 2Sth of Edward II., chapter 14; 1388 a.d., the 12th of Richard II., chapter 6; 1410 a.d., the 11th of Henry IV., chapter 7; 1428 a.d., the 6th of Henry VI., chapter 3; 1449 a.d., the 27th of Henry VI., chapter 5; 1464 a.d., the 4th of Edward IV., chapter 7; 1552 a.d., the 6th of
Edward VI., chapter 3; 1603 a.d., the 1st of James I., chapter 25; 1625 a.d., the 1st of Charles I., chapter 7; 1627 a.d., the 3d of Charles I., chapter 1). The Puritan ideas obtained ascendency in England and in 1676 a.d., 29 Charles II., chapter 7, was enacted. This statute was the most comprehensive and severe and the most detailed of any English Sunday law. Its purpose as expressed in its title was for " the better observa- 5. Legisla- tion and keeping holy of the Lord's tive Results Day, commonly called Sunday." It of Puritan- enacts the careful execution of all ism. existing laws relating to the Lord's day; commands exercises public and private of piety and of religion on that day; forbids all labor, work, or business of ordinary calling, works of charity or necessity alone excepted, but exempts children; forbids the crying or exposing for sale of wares, merchandise, fruit, herbs, goods, or chattels on pain of forfeiture; forbids travel by horse or boat, except as allowed by a magistrate; relieves the parish of responsibility for robbery of a Sunday traveler; makes void all service of legal writs or proceedings, except in case of treason, murder, and breach of the peace; but its provisions are not to apply to dressing of meats in private families, or in inns, cook or victualing houses, for such as can not be otherwise provided; also the crying and selling of milk before 9 a.m. and after 3 p. si. This statute has been practically the law of England ever since. It has been modified in particulars and exceptions, and other regulations have been made by subsequent statutes, but the law remains substantially the same to-day. At the time of the American Revolution the statute of Charles II. had been for more than 100 years the law of England and of its colonies. With this history of Sunday legislation in England for more than 900 years (from 747), the Puritans came to America. They came with the traditions, civil and religious, of the mother country, particularly those which developed with the Reformation in England; their colonial regulations as to Sunday-keeping therefore could not fail of such influence. To their account has been laid the fabulous " blue-laws," the reports concerning which were an exaggeration of the facts and ridiculous in some things as applying to dumb beasts and inanimate objects. It is, however, true that there were colonial laws on the subject of Sunday-keeping which partook strongly of the religious spirit of the English laws on the same subject and that of the English Puritans who settled the colonics. They were enacted in Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Dutch authorities of the West India Colony enacted Sunday laws for the New Netherlands in 1641, 1647, 1656, 1657, and 1663. In 1665 the " duke's laws " (duke of York's laws) took effect in the English colony of New York, and they contained a provision against profaning Sunday; colonial statutes for preventing desecration of Sunday were enacted also by the general assembly of that colony in 1685, and again in 1695, which were in effect at the time of the American Revolution. When the independence of the American colonies was proclaimed, the continental congress called upon the colonies (then called states), each for itself