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sentenced to be imprisoned or hanged, according to the circumstances of his crime.^[1] Aggravated cases of robbery were doubtless punished with severity, but small offences like hog-stealing, especially when the person who suffered was the master, exposed the offender as a rule only to the pains of a public or private whipping.^[2] In some cases, in addition to public chastisement, he was compelled by order of court to continue in the same employment for a term of two years after the expiration of the time upon which he had agreed.^[3] It not infrequently happened that in condonation for the most serious forms of robbery, a servant bound himself upon the conclusion of the period covered by his indenture to enter into a second indenture by which he agreed to serve a second period.^[4] Whoever induced a man of this class to dispose of his master’s property by stealth, more particularly when the tempter became the beneficiary of the theft, was compelled to suffer imprisonment for a month

1. Beverley’s History of Virginia, p. 207; Palmer’s Calendar of Virginia State Papers, vol. I, p. 35.
2. Records of Middlesex County, original vol. 1673-1685, p. 36.
3. Records of Lancaster County, original vol. 1666-1680, orders March 9, 1669.
4. “Know all men by these presents that I, Henry Rewcastle . . . being now free and having liberty to bargain, I doe freely binde myselfe and absolutely without compulsion or persuasions of any person or persons whatsoever, to serve from the day of the date hereof three complete years to Mrs. Elizabeth Lockey or her assigns, and to doe all such labour as she the said Mrs. Lockey or her assigns shall sett me about duely and truly in every respect, the consideration I doe owne to have received of the said Mrs. Lockey, namely, for the breaking open of her store and taking rum, mackerell and sugar out thereof, and convey it away, and for this consideration and the true performance of three years’ service from the date hereof, I have hereunto set my hand and seal this 18th day of November in the year of our Lord, 1675.” Records of York County, vol. 1671-1694, p. 162, Va. State Library. See also Orders of Court, Jan. 12, 1684, Records of Middlesex County, original vol. 1680-1694.