in modern times, for it was applied to all that entered
upon a legal agreement to remain in the employment of another for a
prescribed time.[167] There are many instances of persons of gentle
blood becoming indentured servants to lawyers or physicians, in order
to acquire a knowledge of those professions.[168] All apprentices were
called servants. Tutors were sometimes brought over from England under
terms of indenture to instruct the children of wealthy planters in
courses higher than those offered by the local schools. Several
instances are recorded of gentlemen of large estates who are spoken of
as servants, but such cases are very rare.[169] What was of more
common occurrence was the entering into indenture of persons who had
become bankrupt. The severe English laws against debtors forced many
to fly from the country to escape imprisonment, and there could be no
surer way for them to evade their creditors than to place themselves
under the protection of some planter as a servant and to sail for
Virginia. How numerous was the debtor class in the colony is shown by
an act of the Assembly in 1642, which exempted from prosecution
persons that had fled from their creditors in England. The colonial
legislators declared openly that the failure to pass such a law would
have hazarded the desertion of a large part of the country.

At intervals large numbers of political prisoners were sent to
Virginia. During the civil wars in England, when the royal forces were
meeting defeat, many of the king's soldiers were captured, and many of
these were sold to the planters as servants. A large importation took
place after the defeat of Charles II at Worcester.[170] From 1653 to
1655 hundreds of unfortunate Irishmen suffered the consequence of
their resistance to the government of Cromwell by banishment to the
plantations.[171] After 1660, when the tables had been turned, and the
royalist party was once more in power, there set in a stream of
Commonwealth soldiers and nonconformists.[172] These were responsible
for a rising in the colony in 1663, that threatened to anticipate
Bacon's Rebellion by thirteen years.[173] The Scotch rebellion of 1678
was the occasion of another importation of soldiers. Finally, in 1685,
many of the wretches taken at the battle of Sedgemoor were sent to
Virginia, finding relief in the tobacco fields from the harshness of
their captors.[174]

These immigrations of political prisoners are of great importance.