This table shows every known divorce among the Massachusetts Puritans from 1639 to 1692. Forty divorces are recorded, with columns listing the archival source, date, names of the spouses, the stated cause, the court jurisdiction, and the final decree.
Did the Puritans Divorce, or Did They Have a Utopian Society?
Many people assume the Puritans had an unbreakable, divorce-free society. But the historical record tells a different story.
The first known divorce in America occurred on December 3, 1639, when Elizabeth Luxford discovered that her husband, James Luxford, already had another wife. She appealed to the Massachusetts court for justice. The magistrates granted her the divorce, transferred James’s property to Elizabeth, and punished him severely:
“Next, the court turned its wrath on the deceitful Luxford… sentencing him to be set in the stocks… and banished to England.”
There were not many divorces in Puritan New England, but we do have records of forty—and the grounds they recognized may surprise modern readers.
Causes the Puritans Listed for Divorce
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Another wife (bigamy)
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Desertion
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Adultery
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Remarriage
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Long absence
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Deficiency
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Cruelty
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Failure to provide
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Disease or impotence
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Incest
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Affinity (too closely related)
The Puritans rejected the Roman Catholic and Anglican view of marriage as a sacrament and therefore unbreakable. They considered Roman Catholic views to be a “popish invention, with no basis in the Gospels.” They saw marriage as a civil matter, not a religious one. According to the New England Historical Society, “In 1620, [Plymouth Plantation] leaders decided marriage belonged to the courts, not to the church. Therefore, they concluded, the courts could grant a Puritan divorce.” They often granted alimony to the wife if she was the innocent party.
John Calvin’s Influence on the Puritan View of Marriage
The Bible that the Puritans used was the Geneva Bible translated into English by John Calvin. The famous Reformer John Calvin (1509-1564) was angry at men who abused their wives. He thought those cruel husbands should divorce and let their tyrannized wives go free.
So Calvin interprets Malachi 2:16 to say “If you hate your wife, divorce her,” says the Lord God of Israel…”
For about 2,100 years—long before the King James Version—many Bible translations did not render Malachi 2:16 as “God hates divorce.” Calvin’s interpretation is in keeping with the teaching in Exodus 21:10-11 that commands a man to divorce his wife if he refused to provide the basic minimum level of physical and emotional care.
Here John Calvin is talking directly to abusive husbands who try to hide their bullying behavior from God and others:
“What else is this,” he says, “but to cover by a cloak your violence, or at least to excuse it? for ye do not openly manifest it: but God is not deceived, nor can his eye be dazzled by such a disguise: though then your iniquity is covered by a cloak, it is not yet hid from God; nay, it is thus doubled, because ye exercise your cruelty at home; for it would be better for robbers to remain in the wood and there to kill strangers, than to entice guests to their houses and to kill them there and to plunder them under the pretext of hospitality. This is the way in which you act; for ye destroy the bond of marriage, and ye afterwards deceive your miserable wives, and yet ye force them by your tyranny to continue at your houses, and thus ye torment your miserable wives, who might have enjoyed their freedom, if divorce had been granted them.”
Notice how Calvin says it’s one thing for a robber to kill a traveler in a forest out in the open, where that person knows there is danger. But it’s especially treacherous for a robber to offer hospitality and invite a guest into their home and then kill and pillage them. And yet this is what cruel men do to their wives. They pretend to honor the marriage bond, but instead they torment their wife under her own roof, secretly, hidden under a cloak, in the one place that ought to be safe. John Calvin says, God sees it, and he isn’t dazzled by clever concealment. In fact, the concealment makes it twice as bad. It would be better to let the tormented wife go and enjoy her freedom.
Footnotes
Table: This table of every known Massachusetts Puritan divorce was published in the book, A History of Matrimonial Institutions, Vol 2, by George Elliot Howard, 1904. University of Chicago, p. 333.
Puritan view of marriage: “The Puritan Divorce Allows Escape From the Chain of Matrimony,” New England Historical Society (2019), accessed 8/17/19, http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/puritan-divorceallows-escape-from-the-chain-of-matrimony/.
Luxford divorce: Glenda Riley, Divorce: An American Tradition (Oxford: Oxford Press, 1991), 12. Male adultery wasn’t accepted as grounds for divorce in Massachusetts until the late 1700s. In a farming society, female adultery was considered much worse because a child could make a claim to inherit the land. Regarding impotence, in virtually all ancient agrarian societies, even in Jewish society prior to Christ, the inability to bear children was a serious problem. Men were responsible for having at least two children.
What types of divorce are available in your state? Click here to see which states may be changing their no-fault divorce laws.
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