Yet bundling does not seem the kind of notion the early Puritans, eager as they were to abolish all pretexts for 'filthy dalliance', were likely to have introduced, or willingly tolerated. Indeed, as the practice grew the Puritan states went to some pains to discountenance it. In view of the housing problems with which the early settlers were faced, it is not possible to say categorically that they never bundled; but the present writer has found no echoes of the practice in early records.
It has also been argued (and this seems a likely theory) that bundling was introduced into the New World by Dutch settlers, in whose native land a similar practice was known as 'queesting'. Support is given to this theory by the fact that as early as 1636 there were attempts-not conspicuously successful-to suppress the practice among Dutch settlers in New York. Others have suggested that Welsh settlers may have spread the custom. (Bundling in the British Isles will be considered in later chapters.)
The first full-length history of bundling was published in America in 1869. The author, Dr Henry Reed Stiles, was inspired to write it, apparently, by the outcry which arose from a passage in an earlier book of his, in which he traced the loosening of New England morals to the influence of the French wars. After noting the increase in vice and drunkenness, he had said: 'Bundling-that ridiculous and pernicious custom which prevailed among the young to a degree which we can scarcely credit-sapped the fountain of morality and tarnished the escutcheon of thousands of families.' New Englanders, proud of their ancestry, protested that this picture was overdrawn, and Dr Stiles's subsequent investigations into bundling served to show that on the whole it was.
Fully a century before Dr Stiles wrote his book, the American settlers had begun to grow restive over the condemnation of their courting customs by low-minded visitors from Britain. But the Reverend Andrew Burnaby, Vicar of Greenwich, who travelled in the middle settlements in 1759-60, proved a tolerant observer. 'Singular stations and manners', he says, 'will be productive of singular customs, but frequently such as upon slight examination may appear to be the effects of mere grossness of character will, upon deeper research, be found to proceed from simplicity and innocence.'
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