Page:A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed.djvu/367

 and, in about two Years, made himself so familiar with her, (to describe it no nearer) that he divested her of all Modesty also; but that he might not make it a Piece of Debauchery, as he called it, he gets a profligate Parson, and marries the Girl, himself upwards of Forty, and the Child a little above Thirteen, which he alledged was a marriageable Age, and before she was Fourteen she was with Child by him. Whether the died in Child-bed or no, I do not remember; but this I have heard for Truth, that a few Years after he was under Prosecution, or at last fled the Country for a more criminal Conversation with the t'other Child, (viz.) his own Daughter, when, to palliate the Matter, he would have marry'd her too; but the Design was happily prevented. I hope no Body would deny, but that whatever the first was, the last was not Matrimonial Whoredom. only, but Matrimonial Incest.

is true, the last is a superlative in Wickedness, and is needful to our Case; but the first I take to merit very justly the Title of Matrimonial Whoredom, and to come within the reach of my Text.

I could give a Counter-example to this in a Woman upwards of Forty, who, having bred up a Youth almost in Charity in her Family, and being her self left a Widow, married the little Boy, so I call him, and did it with Circumstances scandalous enough: The Particulars indeed I have not at large, but at his Thirteenth Year she married him, and before he was Fifteen Years old, had a Child by him, and after that three more.

I cannot enter into the Detail of her Story, no not so much as I have had an Account of;