CHAPTER III

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THE COLONIES UNDER CHARLES I

It must be confessed that hitherto the amount achieved Character by English colonization had not been much. The main fault Virginia lay probably, neither with Trading Company nor with royal settlers, treachery, but with the material out of which the Colony was formed. The theory which has wrought such misery in all times, that the new world is the fit resort for the failures of the old, had been tried and found wanting. The evidence as to the general bad character of the Virginia immigrants is from a variety of sources. Prisoners were released on condition of proceeding to the Colony. In 1618 1 we hear of the City of London “ shipping thither one hundred young boys and girls who lay starving in the streets,” and young women were in some cases ‘ pressed ’ to emigrate. As late as 1638 out of the hundreds who arrived every year, we are told 2 that scarcely any came but those “ who are brought in as merchandise to make sale of.” Sir Josiah Child’s account has been often quoted 3 —“ Virginia and Barbadoes were first peopled by a sort of loose vagabond people, vicious and destitute of means at home, being either unfit for labour, or such as could find none to employ themselves about, or had so misbehaved themselves by whoring, thieving, and ■ debauchery, that none would give them work, which, merchants and masters of ships (being agents or ‘ spirits ’ as they were called), gathered up about the streets of London and other places, to be employed upon Plantations.” But, more striking is the contemporary testimony of the customer of the Port of London, who writes with regard to the Proclamation of 1637 4 —“Most of those who go to Virginia have ordinarily no habitation, can bring no certificate, and are better out than within the kingdom.”

1 Oct. 14, Sainsbury, Cal. ofS. P., 1574 1660, a A New Discourse of Trade . 1698.

5 Ap. 6, ibid,

* 1637. Sainsbury, ibid.

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