The Horny Pilgrim: a true story of the Plymouth Plantation

Totally by accident and having nothing to do with the holiday, I happen to be reading books by and about the Mayflower Pilgrims and their early descendants. This morning I ran across this passage in Of Plymouth Plantation, by the primary leader, second governor and Mayflower passenger William Bradford. It is part of a chapter called "Wickedness Breaks Forth." 

See my numbered annotations following, please:


After a time of the writing of these things befell a very sad accident of the like foul nature in this government, this very year, which I shall now relate. There was a youth whose name was Thomas Granger. He was servant to an honest man of Duxbury, being about 16 or 17 years of age. He was this year detected of buggery and indicted for the same, with a mare, a cow, two goats, five sheep, two calves and a turkey.[1] Horrible it is to mention, but the truth of the history requires it. He was first discovered by one that accidentally [2] saw his lewd practices towards the mare. (I forebear particulars. [3]) Being upon it examined and committed, in the end he not only confessed the fact with that beast at that time, but sundry times before and at several times with all the rest of the forenamed in his indictment. And this his free confession was not only in private to the magistrates (though first he strived to deny it) but to sundry, both ministers and others, and afterwards, upon his indictment, to the whole Court and jury; [4] and confirmed at his execution. And whereas some of the sheep could not so well be known by his description of them, [5] others with them were brought before him and he declared which were they and which were not. [6] And accordingly he was cast by the jury and condemned, and after executed about the 8th of September, 1642. A very sad spectacle it was. For first the mare and then the cow and the rest of the lesser cattle [7] were killed before his face [8], according to the law, Leviticus xx.15; and then he himself was executed. The cattle were all cast into a great large pit that was digged of purpose for them, and no use made of any part of them.
 
Upon the examination of this person and also of a former that had made more sodomitical attempts upon another... [9]
 

1. Is this what we should be doing with our turkeys today, if we really want to be like the Pilgrims?
2. Yeah, right, "accidentally." 
3. Bummer. Puritans are so frustrating!
4. Bestial and proud. I bet they tortured him, though.
5. Where's that one sheep with the perty mouth?
6. Did that one, yeah. That one, too, Oh yeah! No, not that one. C'mon, I do have standards.
7. Lesser cattle? Oh, right, that one goat really wasn't very attractive.
8. Okay, this is getting brutal.
9. Further Pilgrim wickedness I shall spare you. But there was some..

Happy Thanksgiving, Everybody.