Man sought for raping a horse in Norfolk; fortunately for him, Massachusetts is no longer a Puritan-run theocracy

The MetroWest Daily News reports police in Norfolk are hunting a man they say lured a mare out of a barn with some grain and then had his way with her.

The horse was uninjured, the farm owner reports.

In Massachusetts's early days, the penalty for bestiality was death. In fact, the last person executed anywhere in what is now the US for the crime was Benjamin Goad (possibly Gourd), hanged by the neck in 1674 in what was then the town of Roxbury for the crime of copulating with a mare, in broad daylight no less.

Samuel Danforth, the minister at the teen's church, the First Church in Roxbury, wrote that he deserved to die, in a sermon titled The Cry of Sodom Enquired Into; Upon Occasion of the Arraignment and Condemnation of Benjamin Goad, for His Arraignment and Condemnation of Benjamin Goad, for His Prodigious Villany, which goes on for 12 pages about sins of the flesh in general and the kid's villainy in particular:

He often attempted Buggery with several Beasts, before God left him to commit it: at last God gave him over to it, and he continued in the frequent practise thereof for several Moneths. Being at length, by the good hand of God, brought under the Yoke of Government and Service, (which might have bridled and restrained him from such wickedness) he violently brake away from his Master, and with an high hand boldly and impudently, like a childe of Belial, shook off that Yoke of God, casting reproach and disgrace upon his Master. Having now obtained a licentious liberty, he grew so impudent in his wickedness, as to commit this horrid Villany in the sight of the Sun, and in the open field, even at Noon-day; proclaiming his sin like Sodom. Though he be a Youth in respect of years, yet he is grown old in wickedness, and ripe for Vengeance. The Church cannot be cleansed, untill this wicked person be put away from among us.

H/t Jake at Hub History.