on the ground that, in failing to depart, he had exposed himself to the penalty of death, which was the punishment originally prescribed for his crime. In 1638, six prisoners who had been granted to William Fleneman of London to be dispatched to the Colony, were informed that if they lingered in England twenty days after they had been released, or if they should return to that country without permission, they should be seized and hung.[1] The crimes for which the prisoners sent out as servants had been condemned were often of a widely different nature. John Haydon, who asked while an inmate of Bridewell that he should be allowed to transport himself to Virginia, had given offence by persisting in “preaching abroad”;[2] Henry Robinson, on the other hand, who was bound to James Place, an emigrant to that Colony, had been convicted of piracy, but owing probably to extenuating circumstances had been reprieved.[3]
There are many strong indications to sustain the belief that the disposition of the English authorities to substitute in many cases transportation for death arose from the fact that it was shocking to the sentiments of the magistrates, even of that age, to carry out with pitiless rigidity the criminal code then in force. At this time, there were three hundred crimes in the calendar for which capital punishment was inflicted.[4] It seemed to be too harsh a punishment to impose death for the smallest offence.
- ↑ British State Papers, Colonial, Domestic Cor. Chas. I, vol. 284, No. 42; Sainsbury Abstracts for 1636, p. 91, Va. State Library; Domestic Cor. Chas. I, Docquet; Sainsbury Abstracts for 1638, p. 64, Va. State Library.
- ↑ Ibid., vol. 261, fol. 243; Sainsbury Abstracts for 1635, p. 117, Va. State Library.
- ↑ Petition of Henry Robinson, British State Papers, Colonial, vol. VIII, No. 93; Sainsbury Abstracts for 1635, p. 144, Va. State Library.
- ↑ Brown’s Genesis of the United States, p. 629.
