passengers, who was a drover from Yorkshire, had been made drank in Smithfield, and while in that condition had been enticed into the vessel at midnight, being under the impression that he was returning to his lodgings. Mary Cooper, a young woman in search of employment, had been told that by going on board she would find a place in Virginia, which was represented to her as a town situated only a few miles below Gravesend on the Thames. Elizabeth Smalridge had been persuaded by a soldier to enter the ship, where he had sold her into bondage.[1]
Warrants for the return of children and the discharge of grown persons who had been inveigled on board vessels were issued in great numbers and served upon the captains in command. There are instances of widowed mothers seeking by this means to recover children not ten years old, of fathers to recover sons under eleven years of age.[2] A second warrant was sworn out at the same time for the seizure of the person who had been guilty of the abduction complained of, this person being generally some notorious spirit who was suspected of habitually committing the crime. Such was Christian Chacrett, who in 1655 was brought before a justice of the peace for enticing Edward Furnifall and his wife into the ship Planter, which was soon to raise anchor to set sail for Virginia;[3] such was the still more infamous Avis, a resident of the vicinity of St. Katherine’s in London, who about the same time was arrested for taking on board of a Virginian vessel a boy eleven years of age.[4] This traffic in kidnapped children and adults was carried on in Bristol as flagrantly and out-
- ↑ Interregnum Entry Book, vol. 106, p. 84, British State Papers, Colonial, vol. XIII, No. 29, I.
- ↑ Denbigh MSS., Royal Hist. MSS. Commission, Fourth Report, Appx., p. 272; Interregnum Entry Book, vol. 100, pp. 63, 64.
- ↑ William and Mary College Quarterly, April, 1893, p. 198.
- ↑ Interregnum Entry Book, vol. 100, pp. 63, 64.
