There he devoted himself to a strictly religious life, refusing to marry (many other Icelandic priests were married) and devoting himself to reciting the Our Father, the Creed, and a hymn, as well as fifty Psalms. Thorlac was consecrated a bishop by Augustine of Nidaros and worked to regulate the Augustinian Rule in Iceland, as well as eradicate simony, lay patronage, and clerical incontinency.
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The trial resumed in November 1627 under Bishop George Montaigne and Frances was convicted of "incontinency", or adultery. Among her twenty commissioner-judges (only one of whom, Sir Charles Caesar, dissented from the judgment by excusing himself) was the poet John Donne, who was then Dean of St Paul's Cathedral.R. C. Bald, John Donne: A Life (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1970), pp. 420–422.
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London's behaviour, particularly towards women, caused him difficulty at different points in his career. While in Oxford, he was punished with public penance for adultery with a mother and daughter: > This Dr. London, for his incontinency, afterwards did open penance in > Oxford, having two smocks on his shoulders for Mrs. Thykked and Mrs. > Jennyngs, the mother and the daughter: with one of whom he was taken by > Henry Plankney in his gallery, being his sister's son.
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During the next few years Porter consummated a relationship with Herodias Gardiner, the former common-law wife of George Gardiner. In October 1667 an indictment was made "against Mr. John Porter of Narragansett in the King's Province and Harrud Long alias Gardiner for that they are suspected to cohabit and so to live in way of incontinency." The following May, Porter appeared in court and was acquitted, and the next October Herodias was similarly charged, and acquitted as well. It is uncertain if Porter ever married Herodias, but she co-signed several deeds with him in 1671.
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In addition to his fine of £1 he was required to appear before the General Court and the Court of Assistants to publicly confess. Coles was charged a third time for drunkenness in 1633, along with fellow settler John Shatswell, at Agawam. Shatswell was fined £2, but Coles was fined £10 (about US$2400 in 2019) for multiple offenses: drunkenness, encouraging Shatswell's wife to drink, and "intiseing her to incontinency and other misdemeanor." Coles was also sentenced "to stand with a whte sheete of pap on his back wherein a drunkard shalbe written in great letters, & stand therewith soe longe as the Court thinks meete...." He was charged a fourth time in 1634, this time in Roxbury, and the court responded with more severe penalties: he was forced to wear a red letter "D" (for drunkenness) for a year and was disenfranchised (deprived of voting rights).
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You have been, it is true, a profligate, an unbeliever, and a > hypocrite. Not many years passed of your conventual life, and you were never > in the choir, always in private houses, so that the laity observed you. You > were deprived of your professorship, we own it; you were prohibited from > preaching and hearing confessions; you were obliged to give hush-money to > the father of one of your victims, as we learned from an official document > of the Neapolitan Police to be 'known for habitual incontinency;' your name > came before the civil tribunal at Corfu for your crime of adultery. You have > put the crown on your offences, by as long as you could, denying them all; > you have professed to seek after truth, when you were ravening after > sin.Newman, John Henry, Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in > England, The Works of Cardinal John Henry Newman Birmingham Oratory > Millennium Edition Volume 1 (2000), pp. 427–28.
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