law, and which often restrained the
freeholder from alienating his land from the lordly but unborn
aristocrat to whom it should descend.

Next in the scale of importance in this little baronial society, were
the indented servants, who, either for felony or treason, were sent over
to the colony, and bound for a term of years to some one of the
planters. In some cases, too, the poverty of the emigrant induced him to
submit voluntarily to indentures with the captain of the ship which
brought him to the colony, as some compensation for his passage. These
servants, we learn, had certain privileges accorded to them, which were
not enjoyed by the slave: the service of the former was only temporary,
and after the expiration of their term they became free citizens of the
colony. The female servants, too, were limited in their duties to such
employments as are generally assigned to women, such as cooking, washing
and housework; while it was not unusual to see the negro women, as even
now, in many portions of the State, managing the plough, hoeing the
maize, worming and stripping the tobacco, and harvesting the grain. The
colonists had long remonstrated against the system of indented servants,
and denounced the policy which thus foisted upon an infant colony the
felons and the refuse population of the mother country. But, as was too
often the case, their petitions and remonstrances were treated with
neglect, or spurned with contempt. Besides being distasteful to them as
freemen and Cavaliers, the indented servants had already evinced a
restlessness under restraint, which made them dangerous members of the
body politic. In 1662, a servile insurrection was secretly organized,
which had well nigh proved fatal to the colony. The conspiracy was
however betrayed by a certain John Berkenhead, one of the leaders in the
movement, who was incited to the revelation by the hope of reward for
his treachery; nor was the hope vain. Grateful for their deliverance,
the Assembly voted this man his liberty, compensated his master for the
loss of his services, and still further rewarded him by a bounty of five
thousand pounds of tobacco. Of this reckless and abandoned wretch, we
will have much to say hereafter.

Another feature in this patriarchal system of government was the right
of property in those inferior races of men, who from their nature are
incapable of a high degree of liberty, and find their greatest
development, and their truest happin