the evil in spite of all that had been done to eradicate it. This order recited that many persons were still induced by a great variety of devices to go on board of ships bound for the Colonies, and after being thus secured were carried off against their wishes. Many others who had started upon the voyage with great willingness, and had been supplied with food and apparel at the expense of the owners of the vessels in which they sailed, afterwards caused their friends in England to begin prosecutions of these owners without any just ground on which to base a suit. So much annoyance resulted from the frequency of these prosecutions that the Council, on the occasion referred to, reaffirmed the regulation adopted in 1664, by commanding that all servants who should hereafter be carried out of the kingdom should be required, in case they were not bound by indentures to planters in the Colonies, to enter into formal contracts with the owners of the ships in which they intended to sail, which contracts were to be executed in the presence of a magistrate. As a further precaution, their names were to be preserved in books set apart specially for the purpose in the magistrate’s office.[1] A few years afterwards, the attention of the Committee for Trade and Plantations was called to the fact that several vessels had recently cleared at Gravesend, whose officers had not conformed to the order in council of 1682, so far as it related to the servants on board who were destined for the Colonies, and the Committee at once took steps to have the order renewed and republished as a warning to those who were disposed to disregard it.[2]
