There is certainly enough ambiguity about the record of this case to be 
disturbing, and I agree with those who believe the William and Mary 
group has allowed wishful thinking to get considerably ahead of the 
evidence.

However, though sodomy was surely illegal under any circumstances, it 
may be worth remembering that the cultural/legal understanding of age 
and consent relative to heterosexual intercourse has changed radically 
since the Jamestown period.  If memory serves, the age of consent for 
girls was far younger than 19 in both England and Virginia in the 
seventeenth century.

And throughout the U.S., at least, it rose steadily during the course 
of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to the point that the 
marriages of many of our ancestors--involving, for example, a female in 
her mid-teens and a male in his early twenties or older--would now be 
not only illegal but criminally actionable.

--Jurretta Heckscher


On Mar 12, 2007, at 8:20 AM, Brent Tarter wrote:

> Richard Cornish and his case have been well known to historians of 
> early
> American gay and lesbian history for several years. The most recent
> scholarship, by retired Princeton University historian John Murrin,
> appeared last summer in volume three of the Library of Virginia's
> Dictionary of Virginia Biography. A review of the original manuscript
> record disclosed that the person Cornish was hanged for committing
> sodomy with was 19 years old, not 29, which may suggest the propriety 
> of
> reconsidering the nature of the relationship.
>
> Brent Tarter
> The Library of Virginia
> [log in to unmask]
>
> Visit the Library of Virginia's Web site at http://www.lva.lib.va.us