OK, I quickly found this. I did not vet it or verify it, eieio.

The Price of Adultery in Puritan Massachusetts, 1641

This is the story of Mary Latham an eighteen-year-old girl who strayed from the moral path of her Puritan community and paid for her transgression with her life. Mary suffered from unrequited love. Spurned by the object of her affection, she resolved to wed the first man who came along. She carried out her threat by marrying a much older man for whom she could muster no fondness.

Mary was what we today would call a “Party Girl.” She apparently liked a good time and it wasn’t long after her wedding that she was seduced by the overtures of several young men (married and unmarried) to join in drinking parties that often led to sex. One of her companions was James Britton, a recently arrived professor from England. After the act (and the onset of an illness he presumed was a punishment) Britton’s conscience persuaded him to confess his action. This was the start of Mary’s misfortunes, for the Massachusetts colony had that very year constructed its first code of laws and among these was the penalty of death for the crime of adultery.

“The woman proved very penitent…”

John Winthrop was the first Governor of Massachusetts Colony. He describes the plight of Mary Latham in his diaries:

“At this court of assistants one James Britton, a man ill affected both to our church discipline and civil government, and one Mary Latham, a proper young woman about 18 years of age, whose father was a godly man and had brought her up well, were condemned to die for adultery…

[…]

They were both executed, they both died very penitently, especially the woman, who had some comfortable hope of pardon of her sin, and gave good exhortation to all young maids to be obedient to their parents, and to take heed of evil company.”

No, this is not comparable to what today’s theocrats are proposing today by any strech of the imagination. I am merely showing that the Puritans were in fact religious extremists. The Puritans also paved the way for what we consider religious extremist in America today.