“As Religion and Reason Require”: Equitable Discretion and the Legal Culture of Massachusetts Bay

Abstract This article examines the legal treatment of so-called “distracted” settlers in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It argues that although equitable discretion defined the system established by the Lawes and Libertyes, courts only extended such favorable treatment to active participants in puritan society. Far from a model of altruistic care, the precepts of religion and reason reinforced the insular, care-only-for-thy-flock nature of seventeenth-century Massachusetts society.