Edward Penruddock and George Duke, who took an active part in the uprising which occurred in Salisbury in 1655, were discharged from prison and suffered to withdraw to Virginia on condition that they would make no further attempt against the government of Cromwell.[1] It is not improbable that some of their followers were also banished thither, although the majority of them were transported to the West Indies. When the monarchy was restored, a large number of political and religious offenders, the persecution of the non-conformists having been revived, were sent to the Colony. In October, 1662, the sheriff of London was commanded to deliver to Captain Foster, who was then on the point of sailing, the prisoners whose names were given in the list presented with the warrant.[2] The number of these offenders living in Virginia, in 1663, as servants was sufficiently great to give rise to a conspiracy among persons of this description, the object of which was not merely their own emancipation, but the subversion of the religion and form of government that had the countenance of the people at large.[3]
The number of political offenders among the laborers of Virginia previous to 1670 could never have been great, as Governor Berkeley, in 1671, estimated the whole population of servants at only six thousand.[4] In 1678, when
- ↑ Interregnum Entry Book, vol. 104, p. 481. The word “Virginia,” used in the English records of this age as representing the point of destination for shipments of various kinds from England, was often intended to cover the West Indies also. Royal Hist. MSS. Commission, Thirteenth Report, Appx. part I, p. 605. The expression “Continent of Virginia” appears very frequently late in the seventeenth century.
- ↑ Warrant to the Sheriffs of London, British State Papers, Colonial Papers, Oct. 16, 1662; Sainsbury Abstracts for 1662, p. 36, Va. State Library.
- ↑ Hening’s Statutes, vol. II, p. 510.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 515.
