Usually in discussion of blue laws, those very Draconian regulations which have so aroused the ire or the respect of moderns, depending upon which way they look at it, the debaters confine themselves mostly to New England Puritan forms, or those of New York, Pennsylvania or New Jersey.

In the days the Puritans formulated the blue laws, Virginia was looked upon as the home of high living and frivolity. Even to this day few would look for such measures among that old aristocratic colony.

As a matter of fact, the Virginians of the seventeenth century, had a habit of enacting indigo-tinted laws, and likewise enforcing them, which might have made the Puritans sit up late at night to beat them.

Aside from the stern and vindictive intolerance which finds utterance in the acts of the Virginia Assembly between the years 1662 and 1680, the most striking element in them is the tremendous premium placed upon spying and informing. In most every case in which such a reward is possible the law encouraged the man to spy upon his neighbor.

If the Virginia husbands agreed with Kipling that "a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke," the following act must have been the occasion of much domestic infelicity.

Unless a man was well stocked with the divine weed it was worth while to attend church with promptness and regularity:

Devices for public instruction and amusement were not to be neglected with impunity, even by the courts of the colony, as witness the following:

There is no record of the Court ever having been mulcted of tobacco for depriving the people of the opportunity to watch the sufferings of their friends and neighbors.

Severe laws were directed against Quakers. Prior legislation had attempted to put a damper on being any kind of a "separatist," which meant any fellow who didn't agree with the Established Church. Evidently a little further law on the subject was thought necessary, for in 1663 the Virginia Assembly passed the following act:

Even Virginia hospitality might well have paused in the face of such a flying start toward bankruptcy.

That a stowaway might prove costly is demonstrated by the following:

Evidently a little thing like a couple of years in servitude did not deter the lovers of pork chops from appropriating their neighbors' swine, for in 1679 the Assembly delivered themselves of the following act:

As the English law of the period usually prescribed hanging for a twice convicted felon, it is presumed that the third dose of justice proved an efficient remedy.

Not only in the stringency of their laws did the gray cavaliers of the Old Dominion run neck and neck with the grim-visaged gentry of Plymouth Rock, but the doubtful honor of being the last to relinquish the gentle art of witchcraft persecution probably belongs to them as well.

The witchbaiters around Salem and throughout New England generally ceased to a considerable extent their punishment for alleged witchcraft before the eighteenth century, but the Virginian records show the arrest and persecution of Grace Sherwood, of Princess Anne County, for witchcraft in 1706.

For six months this young woman was imprisoned, being brought time and again before the court in an effort to convict her. Finding no evidence in her actions to justify the persecution, the Attorney-General caused the Sheriff of the county to impanel a jury of women to examine Grace Sherwood physically and instructed them to find something to indicate that she was a witch. This the women failed to do and they were threatened with contempt of court for their failure.

Everything else having failed, it was decided to put Miss Sherwood to the water test, which consisted in tying her hands and feet and throwing her overboard in the nearest lake or river. If she sank she was innocent, but if by her struggles she managed to keep afloat for a few moments, she was guilty of witchcraft.

The full account of this trial is preserved by the Virginia Historical Society, and the last two court orders in the case are of interest as marking the close of witchcraft persecution in the colonies.

On the afternoon of July 10, 1706, the court and county officers and populace assembled on John Harper's plantation, and the arrangements being completed, Grace Sherwood was carried out to a nearby inlet of Lynnhaven Bay. The official court reporter tells quaintly the rest of the story:

The woman was finally turned free, and thus ended the last legal prosecution for witchcraft in the colony.