ABSTRACT
Statutes prohibiting breach of the peace covered many types of public disorder and disruption, but specific laws against the breach of the Sabbath were an important part of the close relationship between Connecticut’s churches and its political governance. By the 1780s the dependent status of children convicted of public disorder was more apparent because of the wider recognition of the responsibility of adults for the legal costs of their behavior. Perceptively recognizing that youthful lawbreaking and disruption of public order were most likely to occur away from the restraining eyes of adults, colonial legislators passed several laws to restrict the freedom of movement of young people. From the seventeenth century, Connecticut treated fornication as a criminal act rather than the subject of civil action; it was thus a crime against the public morals and order of society.
