No Jesuit or Roman Catholic priest was permitted to make his residence within the colony.
All persons were forbidden to run or even walk, "except to and from church" on Sunday, and a burglar, because he committed his crime on that sacred day, was to have one of his ears cut off.

John Wedgewood was placed in the stocks for being in the company of drunkards.

Thomas Petit, for "suspicion of slander, idleness and stubbornness," was severely whipped.

Captain Lowell, a dashing ladies' man, more of a cavalier and modern society fop than a sober Puritan, was admonished to "take heed of his light carriage." The records show that Josias Plaistowe, for stealing four baskets of corn from the Indians, was ordered to return to them eight baskets, to be fined five pounds, and thereafter to "be called by the name of Josias, and not Mr.Plaistowe, as formerly." The grand jurors were directed to admonish those who wore apparel too costly for their income, and, if they did not heed the warning, to fine them, and in the year 1646 there was enacted a law in Massachusetts which imposed a penalty of flogging for kissing a woman on the street, even in the way of honest salute.

This law remained in force for a hundred years, though it was practically ignored.
In this school of rigid Puritanism lived the northern family of Stevens, of the same Spanish branch as the Virginia family.