Photograph by Flint Born

In 1642 the press thumped in Cambridge and out came an 11 1/2-by-7-inch broadside publishing the first collection of American laws enacted by a legislature. The 15 "Capitall Lawes" named offenses for which one would be put to death in Massachusetts. (Incidentally, the press belonged to Elizabeth Glover Dunster, wife of the first president of Harvard. When she died, in 1643, he took the machinery over, and Harvard got into the printing business. It was the first printing press in British North America.)

Religion was the bedrock of the colonial enterprise; witness the Biblical precepts cited in the broadside. Sex was a Puritan affliction; see six of the capital crimes. For openers, thou shalt not worship any god but the Lord God. Don't be a witch. Lying with a beast is out, and the sheep is executed, too. A homosexual act is a killer; lesbianism is not imagined. Adulterers die, as does any man who rapes a married or "contract.d" woman. The age of consent is 10.

No copies of the 1642 broadside are known to exist, but it was reprinted in England in 1643, and of that edition, two copies remain. One is in the British Museum. The other used to be owned by Lincoln Cathedral. The late George Goodspeed '25 told in The Bookseller's Apprentice (1996) how the dean of the cathedral, needing funds to repair the fabric of his church, engaged Goodspeed's Book Shop in 1955 to offer the elderly ephemeron for sale for $12,000 (10 for the dean and 2 for the dealer). Massachusetts governor Christian Herter '15, LL.D. '57, wanted the broadside for the state library, but the legislature would not appropriate funds. The rare book librarian of Harvard then stepped in quietly and persuaded the West Publishing Company, makers of law books, to secure the artifact for the Law School Library. Goodspeed's suggested to the dean that he send it over by registered airmail, but the airplane bearing the suggestion crashed. The old piece of paper did at last arrive at the Law School, where it lives in a red morocco portfolio, a juridical progenitor.

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