are of
Virginia.

As for malefactors condemned to transportation, though the greedy
planter will always buy them, yet it is to be feared they will be
very injurious to the country, which has already suffered many
murders and robberies, the effect of that new law of England.'

Beverley notes also about these servants that 'a white woman is rarely
or never put to work in the ground, if she be good for anything else.'

Bishop Meade (vol. i, p. 89) speaks also of these female servants:

'While the company and the Governor were endeavoring to improve the
condition of the colony, by selecting a hundred young females of
good character, to be wives to the laborers on the farms of
Virginia, King James had determined to make of the colony a Botany
Bay for the wretched convicts in England, and ordered one hundred
to be sent over. The company remonstrated, but in vain. A large
portion, if not all of them, were actually sent. The influence of
this must have been pernicious. Whether it was continued by his
successors, and how long, and to what extent, I know not.'

And again (pp. 365-'6), he says:

'The greatest difficulty they (the vestrymen) appear to have had
was with the hired servants, of whom, at an early period, great
numbers came over to this country, binding themselves to the richer
families. The number of illegitimate children born of them and
thrown upon the parish, led to much action on the part of the
vestries and the legislature. _The lower order of persons in
Virginia, in a great measure, sprang from these apprenticed
servants and from poor exiled culprits.'_

Stith says (ed. 1747, p. 103), under date of 1609:

'But a great part of this new company consisted of unruly sparks,
packed off by their friends to escape worse destinies at home. And
the rest were chiefly made up of poor gentlemen, broken tradesmen,
rakes, and libertines, footmen, and such others as were much fitter
to spoil or ruin a commonwealth, than to help to raise or maintain
one.'

Again (p. 306), in describing one of the domestic quarrels of the
colony, he copies a statement:

'And whereas it was affirmed that very few of his majesty's
servants were lost in those days, and those persons of the meanest
rank, they replied that for one that then died, five had perished
in Sir Thomas Smit