ABSTRACT
This terse entry in the Essex County Quarterly Court docket book in 1683 conceals a complex series of events that had broad economic and social ramifications beyond the bare fact that Priscilla Willson, a sixteen-year-old orphan, was convicted of fornication and Mr. Samuel Appleton, a twenty-nineyear-old newly-wed, was not. An examination of the evidence presented in this trial, the verdict, and the outcomes of contemporary fornication trials make possible some conclusions about the nature and extent of extramarital sexual activity in Essex County between 1666 and 1685. One notices immediately that Willson and Appleton met disparate fates at the hands of the judges (one of whom was Appleton’s father). Also, that there was a significant age differential. These are all too common features of fornication presentations where an out-ofwedlock pregnancy was not followed by marriage. Appleton’s response to Priscilla Willson’s childbirth declaration of paternity and the testimony of two young servants who had seen Appleton climb into a fourposter bed occupied by an ill Willson and pull the bed curtains closed, was to deny the charge. The child’s death in its first month meant that Mr. Samuel Appleton’s honor could be salved at little cost. He was required to pay one half of the infant’s expenses; Willson’s grandfather, Mr. Oliver Purchis the second half, and Willson’s fine. Appleton was representative of a new ethos developing in Essex County beginning in the 1660s, a transitional decade. He was a church member and an entrepreneur who was engaged in a struggle with Willson’s grandfather for control of the defunct Saugus Ironworks. He was a member of the third generation of Appletons to settle in Essex County and he had no scruples about lying to protect his good name and his marriage.
