On 18 June 1658 a Middlesex justice bound over Priscilla Frotheringham:

‘Binding over’ was a common legal procedure, making the subject financially liable for any further misconduct before the next meeting of the relevant court. But the emotional language of the issuing magistrate, Thomas Hubbert, was far removed from the dry formulae usual in such documents, and betrays his deep disgust at Priscilla's alleged behaviour. For men such as Hubbert, ‘godly reformation’ meant not Lawrence Stone's repressive package of ‘anti-pleasure principles’ but a crusade against vices that were destroying families and poisoning society. An Independent lay preacher, Hubbert had already penned a diatribe attacking those who paid merely lip-service to piety while failing to act against vice and profanity. But if Hubbert embodies godly reformation, Priscilla Frotheringham, a victualler's wife, personifies the challenge it faced. She and her husband Edmund appear repeatedly in the sessions records for gaming, tippling, disorder, and running a suspected bawdy-house.