surrender a part of the personal
liberty so dear to every Englishman.

It is erroneous to suppose that most of the servants were degenerates or
criminals. It is true that the English Government from time to time
sought to lessen the expense of providing for convicted felons by
sending some of them to the colonies, among them on rare occasions a few
decidedly objectionable characters. More than once the Virginians
protested vigorously against this policy as dangerous to the peace and
prosperity of the colony.[2-23] By far the larger part of these penal
immigrants, however, were but harmless paupers, driven perhaps to theft
or some other petty offense by cold and hunger. Often they were
sentenced to deportation by merciful judges in order that they might
not feel the full weight of the harsh laws of that day.[2-24]

And of the small number of real criminals who came in, few indeed made
any lasting imprint upon the social fabric of the colony. Many served
for life and so had no opportunity of marrying and rearing families to
perpetuate their degenerate traits. Those who escaped fled from the
confines of settled Virginia to the mountains or to the backwoods of
North Carolina. Many others succumbed to the epidemics which proved so
deadly to the newcomers from England. In fact the criminal servant was
but a passing incident in the life and development of England's greatest
and most promising colony.[2-25]

An appreciable proportion of the so-called criminal laborers were no
more than political prisoners taken in the rebellions of the Seventeenth
century. These men frequently represented the sturdiest and most
patriotic elements in the kingdom and were a source of strength rather
than of weakness to the colony. When Drogheda was captured by Cromwell's
stern Puritan troops in 1649, some of the unfortunate rebels escaped the
firing squad only to be sent to America to serve in the sugar or tobacco
fields. Just how many of these Irishmen fell to the share of Virginia it
is impossible to say, but the number rises well into the hundreds, and
the patent books of the period are full of headrights of undoubted Irish
origin.[2-26]

When Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660 it became the turn of
the Puritans to suffer, and many non-conformists and former Oliverian
soldiers were sent to Virginia. In fact so many old Commonwealth men
were serving in the tobacco fields in 1663 that they felt strong enough
to plot, not only for