s wives. Moreover, the "maids" were carefully guarded
from imposition or force. Orders were straitly given that "In case they
cannot be presently married, we desire that they may be put with several
householders that have wives until they can be supplied with
husbands.... We desire that the marriage be free, according to nature,
and we would not have these maids deceived and married to servants, but
only such freemen and tenants as have means to maintain them... not
enforcing them to marry against their wills." However, there was very
little need for these precautions, since the men of the settlement
flocked in crowds to the sale of the ladies, and the only difficulty was
that there were more suitors than there were fair ones to make them
happy. The scene presented must have been very much like that to be
found at the old hiring fairs of England, and there does not seem to
have been more embarrassment on the part of the "maids" while their
charms were being appraised by their suitors than if they had been
merely disposing of their services for a short time and in menial
capacity. It is impossible to suppose that women who would seek
matrimony under such circumstances were of a very refined type; but, on
the other hand, they must have been possessed of bravery and
independence beyond the common lot of women of whatever class. Later,
sixty other "maids," "young, handsome, and chaste," according to the
chronicle, were induced to come out to the colony under the same
conditions, and these and their predecessors were among the founders of
the race which developed into the soldiers of the Revolution and of the
yet more terrible struggle of later years.

Unfortunately, there were at this time introduced into the young colony
two elements that were to affect it, one slightly and temporarily only,
the other profoundly and for as long as there was in the South a
distinctiveness of culture. These were the practice of sending criminals
to Virginia and the introduction of slavery. To the first number of
settlers sent over by Sandys, James I. added one hundred felons, and
this was by no means the last shipload of criminals to be exported to
the Virginias. These criminals included both men and women, and their
introduction among the colonists, though on the pretence of their being
indented servants, was an evil which for long found results in the lower
strata of the growing civilization. The women, generally of the lowest
dregs of Eng