The Blue Laws of the Colony of Connecticut are an invented set of harsh statutes governing conduct in the Puritan colony, listed in a history of Connecticut that was published in 1781 in London by the Reverend Samuel Peters, an Anglican who had been forced to leave America. Peters' book popularized the term "blue laws", referring to laws restricting activities on Sunday.
Background
Peters was an Anglican priest hostile to the cause of American independence and had been forced to flee to London in late 1774, shortly before the Revolutionary War began; he made up 45 harsh laws as a hoax to discredit America as backwards and fanatical, and in 1781 published them in a book called A General History of Connecticut, which contains numerous other tall tales.
According to Peters the blue laws "were never suffered to be printed",
Peters was probably the first to popularize the term "blue laws".