Anxious Adulterers

Abstract This essay explores how New England Puritans sought to enforce biblical adultery laws, especially the Mosaic death penalty. Drawing from Scriptural sources and influenced by earlier precedents such as Calvin’s Geneva, Puritans prosecuted adultery as a capital offense to further their aim of reforming social order. These efforts prompted legal developments and theological debates on both sides of the Atlantic throughout the seventeenth century. Although evidentiary issues, jurisdictional questions, and moral qualms often prevented executions, ordinary New Englanders anticipated and feared death as a plausible consequence for the crime of adultery. The rarity of executions, rather than serving as evidence of failure in the so-called Puritan reformation of manners, instead indicates a deterring effect and an impactful prosecutorial campaign to impose moral standards.