e at the end of the
religious wars disposed many to seek to recoup themselves out of the
immense colonial riches of the Spaniards; while the disorders of the
Rebellion and the Commonwealth in England caused successive emigrations
of Puritans and Loyalists to the newer England beyond the seas. At the
close of the Thirty Years' War, too, a host of French and English
adventurers, who had fattened upon Germany and her misfortunes, were
left without a livelihood, and doubtless many resorted to emigration as
the sole means of continuing their life of freedom and even of licence.
Coming to the West Indies these men, so various in origin and character,
hoped soon to acquire there the riches which they lost or coveted at
home; and their expectations deceived, they often broke in a formal and
absolute manner the bonds which attached them to their fellow humanity.
Jamaica especially suffered in this respect, for it had been colonized
in the first instance by a discontented, refractory soldiery, and it was
being recruited largely by transported criminals and vagabonds. In
contrast with the policy of Spain, who placed the most careful
restrictions upon the class of emigrants sent to her American
possessions, England from the very beginning used her colonies, and
especially the West Indian islands, as a dumping-ground for her refuse
population. Within a short time a regular trade sprang up for furnishing
the colonies with servile labour from the prisons of the mother country.
Scots captured at the battles of Dunbar and Worcester,[223] English,
French, Irish and Dutch pirates lying in the gaols of Dorchester and
Plymouth,[224] if "not thought fit to be tried for their lives," were
shipped to Barbadoes, Jamaica, and the other Antilles. In August 1656
the Council of State issued an order for the apprehension of all lewd
and dangerous persons, rogues, vagrants and other idlers who had no way
of livelihood and refused to work, to be transported by contractors to
the English plantations in America;[225] and in June 1661 the Council
for Foreign Plantations appointed a committee to consider the same
matter.[226] Complaints were often made that children and apprentices
were "seduced or spirited away" from their parents and masters and
concealed upon ships sailing for the colonies; and an office of registry
was established to prevent this abuse.[227] In 1664 Charles granted a
licence for five years to Sir James Modyford, brother of Sir Thomas, t