HOOK REVIEWS [ 295 ] reconstruct the legal basis on which the new settlement was founded and the source of the law and precedent to follow. The original colony had no formal charter (the patent under which the colonists came was issued by the Virginia Company, which had no jurisdiction in the Massachusetts area), and lacking this or other legal authority, there was a questionable basis for the exercise of authority over the colonists. Nor can we make the easy assumption that English form and English statute would be followed, for the colonists not only were reluctant to impose many of the harsh penalties of the home country, but they early made plain their intention not to be bound by English precedent but to be free to adapt it to suit their purpose. Mr. Powers shows how the body of Massachusetts colonial law was built up piece by piece, tracing the sources of general authority, then the influence of the church and the early settlers, the evolution of the early courts, the desire for and growth of written codes, and finally the forms and procedures followed. The author has less concern for the minutiae of formal legal procedures such as the form and contents of the writs, technicalities of appeals, jurisdiction, process, appearances, recognizances, and terms of court. Instead, he has concentrated on the more substantive points of law and, by a great number of cases, illustrated not only the workings of the law but the social framework in which the courts operated. The view we get here is not a narrow scene from the courtroom bench, but of a living, working, and also sinning society. Fornicators were pursued with vigor; even married couples whose first child came before the full period of gestation did not escape the whipping post, and adulterers got forty stripes and an hour on the gallows (at one period it was a capital offense ). Crimes against property were much more lighdy considered than those which the Puritan fathers abhorred, namely, sins against the church or authority. There was no pretense that it was a democratic society. It was unlawful for the common folk to mimic or ape their betters (lace and high boots were not to be worn by the common man; they were the indicia of the gentleman). Nor would a court expose a gendeman, even if found guilty, to the stocks or whipping post; a fine was the proper penalty for a gendeman. Citizens of the upper class did not suffer "punishments of humiliation" as they were called. Mr. Powers has dredged up numerous cases to illustrate his points and to bring life and color to his descriptions of how the law operated. Henrie Walton was, for example, brought to court for saying "he had as Leeve to hear a Dogg Barke as to heare Master Cobbett Preach!' Various types of punishment, from the stocks and ducking stool (less frequently used than generally believed) to hanging in chains, are carefully described. There was but one case of beheading and none of quartering, a common practice in England in the case of state prisoners, where