ove their
condition. In 1652, three men and a woman were fined ten shillings each
and costs for wearing silver-lace, another for broad bone-lace, another
for tiffany, and another for a silk hood. Alice Flynt was accused of a
silk hood, but, proving herself worth more than two hundred pounds,
escaped unpunished. Jonas Fairbanks, about the same time, was charged
with "great boots," and the evidence went hard against him; but he was
fortunately acquitted, and the credit of the family saved.

The question of veils seems to have rocked the Massachusetts Colony to
its foundations, and was fully discussed at Thursday Lecture, March 7th,
1634. Holy Mr. Cotton was utterly and unalterably opposed to veils,
regarding them as a token of submission to husbands in an unscriptural
degree. It is pleasant to think that there could be an unscriptural
extent of such submission, in those times. But Governor Endicott and
Rev. Mr. Williams resisted stoutly, quoting Paul, as usual in such
cases; so Paul, veils, and vanity carried the day. But afterward Mr.
Cotton came to Salem to preach for Mr. Skelton, and did not miss his
chance to put in his solemn protest against veils; he said they were a
custom not to be tolerated; and so the ladies all came to meeting
without their veils in the afternoon. Probably the most astounding
visible result from a single sermon within the memory of man.

Beginning with the veils, the eye of authority was next turned on what
was under them. In 1675 it was decided, that, as the Indians had done
much harm of late, and the Deity was evidently displeased with
something, the General Court should publish a list of the evils of the
time. And among the twelve items of contrition stood this: "Long hair
like women's hair is worn by some men, either their own or others' hair
made into periwigs;--and by some women wearing borders of hair, and
their cutting, curling, and immodest laying out of their hair," (does
this hint at puff-combs?) "which practice doth increase, especially
among the younger sort." Not much was effected, however,--"divers of the
elders' wives," as Winthrop lets out, "being in some measure partners in
this disorder." The use of wigs also, at first denounced by the clergy,
was at last countenanced by them: in portraits later than 1700 they
usually replace the black skull-cap of earlier pictures, and in 1752 the
tables had so far turned that a church-member in Newbury refused
communion because "the pastor