One Richard Cluffe, in an utterance which sounds like the voice of Shakespeare's clown, exclaimed at a mean meal served to him, "What! shall I pay twelve pence for the fragments which the grand jury roages have left?" The majesty of the law could not thus be attacked in Massachusetts in the year 1640. Three pounds six shillings and eight pence did Cluffe pay for his rash and angry words--truly a costly dinner.
The ordinary called The Anchor, at Lynn, was kept by one Joseph Armitage. Being a halfway house between Boston and Salem, the magistrates made it their stopping-place on their various trips from court to court. The accounts of this ordinary are still preserved. Governor Endicott's bills for "vitals, beare, and logen," for "bear and caeks," were paid by the Auditor. Governor Bradstreet had "beare and wyne." The succeeding landlord of this ordinary was described by John Dunton in 1686 as a hearty, talkative, fine old gentleman, one of Oliver Cromwell's soldiers. Dunton had at The Anchor a good fowl and a bottle of sack, instead of the beer and cakes of the abstemious Puritan governor.
The "Sports of the Innyard" were sternly frowned upon by Puritan magistrates. Among the games which were named as forbidden in the ordinaries were "carding," dicing, tally, bowls, billiards, slidegroat, shuffle-board, quoits, loggets, ninepins. After a time shuffle-board and bowls were tolerated in private houses, though not deemed reputable at the ordinary.
The Puritan ordinary saw some wedding scenes, and apparently some tentatively gay scenes, since in 1631 the magistrates of Massachusetts Bay, in "consequence of some miscarriages at weddings" which had been held in an ordinary, passed a law prohibiting dancing on such occasions in public houses.
Lord Ley lodged at the Boston ordinary in 1637; and when Governor Winthrop urged him to come to his home from the inn, his lordship declined, saying that the house where he was staying was so well ordered that he could be as private there as elsewhere.
In the towns a night-watch was soon instituted, and the instructions given by the Boston magistrates smack strongly of Dogberry's famous charge. Their number each night was eight; they were "to walk two by two together, a youth joined to an older and more sober person." Lights had to be out,--or hidden,--especially in the ordinaries. "If they see lights, to inquire if there be warrantable cause; and if they hear any noise or disorder, wisely to demand the reason; if they are dancing and singing vainly, to admonish them to cease; if they do not discontinue after moderate admonition, then the constable to take their names and acquaint the authorities therewith. If they find young men and maidens, not of known fidelity, walking after ten o'clock, modestly to demand the cause, and if they appear ill-minded, to watch them narrowly, command them to go to their lodgings, and if they refuse then to secure them till morning." In 1663 Josselyn found that young sparks walking with their sweet-hearts, or "Marmalet-Madams" as he called them, had to go home at nine o'clock.