Cider and Cakes for Highwaymen
an excerpt from The Naked Quaker by Diane Rapaport

Long before the witch trials of 1692, John Higginson, a minister, worried about evils lurking in Salem, Massachusetts. In 1678 he sent a sharply worded petition to the Essex County Court, but it was not witchcraft that prompted Higginson to speak out. Instead, Higginson warned of another serious danger: the “sin of drunkenness and the excessive number of drinking houses” in town. He pointed out that Salem possessed an astounding number of “ordinaries and public drinking houses”—and he listed them all, a total of fourteen, licensed and unlicensed, and at least four more new taverns seeking liquor licenses. On behalf of the good “church members, freemen and sober people of Salem,” Higginson beseeched the court to destroy “all such public houses . . . not . . . absolutely necessary for the
entertainment of travelers and strangers.”

Although drunkenness occurred throughout colonial New England, Salem seemed to have a particular penchant for alcohol. Perhaps Salem’s maritime culture contributed to the proliferation of taverns—to accommodate harddrinking sailors who came ashore with time and money on their hands—
but transient seamen were not the only people who drank too much. Local farmers, laborers, and businessmen—and sometimes even their wives—frequented Salem’s seventeenth-century taverns, and the court records paint a picture of boozy, smoke-filled rooms and disorderly behavior.

In February 1678, for example, only a few months before Higginson’s complaint about the “sin of drunkenness,” the Salem Commissioners Court heard testimony about a brawl at the home of John and Hanna Mason, who apparently kept an unlicensed tavern.

Although the Mason case may have helped to provoke John Higginson’s antitavern petition, a shocking crime spree in late 1676 was certainly on his mind. For a few nights in December, three men on horseback terrorized Salem, robbing and assaulting people along the King’s Highway. When the
law finally caught up with the villains, they turned out to be young Salem residents—Thomas Leonard, Samuel Moore, and Blaze Vinton.

Perhaps they fancied themselves to be romantic cavalier bandits, like the legendary highwaymen who stole from travelers in the English countryside.They may have needed money, particularly Leonard and Moore, who both had suffered recent legal problems and financial losses; Leonard was suspected of arson in the unexplained burning of a coal house at the Rowley Village ironworks, and Moore was fined for having sexual relations with his wife before their marriage.

Whether Leonard, Moore, or Vinton was drunk when the trio ambushed their victims is hard to know. But shortly before the final attack, these would-be highwaymen fortified themselves with pots of hard cider
and fresh-baked cakes at the Salem tavern owned by George Darling.
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Excerpted from The Naked Quaker -- True Crimes and Controversies from the Courts of Colonial New England, by Diane Rapaport. The Naked Quaker, copyright 2007, is published by Commonwealth Editions (www.commonwealtheditions.com) of Beverly, MA