"Testified on oath before the Court, 26th Feb., 1651.

"HENRY BARTHOLOMEW, _Clerk_."

This was indeed an extraordinary outburst of lawless violence, and
gives a singular insight of the state of society. Such an occurrence
in our day would create astonishment. The organized power of the
community to suppress vicious and rude passions was probably never
brought to bear with greater rigidness than in our Puritan villages;
but it did not fully accomplish its end. Behind and beneath the solemn
and formal exterior, there was, after all, perhaps as much
irregularity of life as now. The nature of man had not been subdued.
The people had their quarrels and fights, and their frolics and
merriments, in defiance of the restraints of authority. Violations of
local and general laws were not infrequent; and flowed, as ever since,
from intemperance, in as large a measure. Kitchen, in this instance,
acted as if under the influence of liquor. His behavior, in tripping
up the heels and throwing dirty water upon the person of the
schoolmaster of the town, the dignity of whose social position is
indicated by the title of "Mr.;" and in giving to Corey such a
persistent and gratuitous pommelling,--bears the aspect of a drunken
delirium. The latter seems not to have supposed, for some time, that
he was in earnest, but to have looked upon his conduct as rough play,
which was carried rather too far. Poor Corey was often getting before
the town Court as accused or accuser. He was, to the end, the victim
of ill-usage, either given or taken. Though not a bad-natured man, he
was almost always in trouble. The tenor of his long life was as
eccentric and unruly as the manner of his death was strange and
horrible.