seized on that occasion were disposed of to merchants, and at least sixteen hundred were thus conveyed to America. The Parliamentary fleet in which they were transported sailed first to Barbadoes,[1] and there it is probable that most of this living cargo were disembarked. We have certain information of the arrival of only one hundred and fifty Scotch servants in the Colony when the fleet arrived in 1651.[2] In 1653, the Council of State gave permission to Richard Netherway of Bristol to export from Ireland one hundred Tories who were to be sold as slaves in Virginia.[3] Among the names to be found at this time in the lists of head rights entered in land patents, Irish patronymics are observed to be extremely numerous. Batches of the unfortunate natives of Ireland were now imported. In a patent granted to Colonel Anthony Ellyott in 1655, the head rights were of Irish origin exclusively; this characteristic is also to be observed in patents to John Smithy, to Richard Lee, to Edmund and Littleton Scarborough, to John Woodward, and to others, bearing the same date.[4] These Irishmen were for the most part introduced by merchants and sea-captains, who, after obtaining the certificates of head rights, assigned them to different planters. In 1655, the year in which the importation was the largest in volume, Richard New acquired by patent seven hundred and fifty acres of land by rights transferred to him by Captain Barrett, who had brought over fifteen Irish natives.[5]
- ↑ Interregnum Entry Book, vol. 50, pp. 74, 75; 42, 69.
- ↑ Winsor’s Narrative and Critical History, vol. III, p. 537. Scotch names are now frequently observed in the lists of head rights, in the Va. Land Patent Books, and in inventories of estates. See an instance of latter in Records of Lower Norfolk County, original vol. 1651-1656, f. p. 53.
- ↑ Interregnum Entry Book, vol. 98, p. 405.
- ↑ See Va. Land Patents for 1655.
- ↑ See a long list of Irish names appended to a patent obtained in 1656 by Tabitha and Matilda Scarborough. Va. Land Patents, vol. 1655-1664, p. 35.
