One of the earliest records of the General Court of Virginia contains the following entry under date January 4, 1628/29:
William Reade, aged thirteen or fourteen years, convicted of manslaughter, when the verdict was read, and William Reade asked what he had to say for himself, that he ought not to die, demanded his clergy, whereupon he was delivered to the Ordinary.
There were many such instances. In Virginia the Governor was the Ordinary and as such had authority to accept the boy's plea, have him read the "neck verse," and thereby permit him to go free "after the burning."
The severity of the laws influenced the courts in many parts of England to permit or sentence an offender to escape death by going to one of the American colonies, and it became the custom to sentence convicted criminals to serve for a period of years in an American colony as an indentured servant. A great number of such "convicts" were sent to Virginia because of the constant demand there for indentured servants to cultivate the fields and for other duties.
Many of the convicts became useful citizens of the colony after their terms of servitude ended; but many did not reform and in time became such a menace that for a period after 1670 the General Assembly forbade that any more convicts be brought into the colony.
It can be seen therefore that from the beginning the population of Virginia grew by immigration from various sources and that not all who came to the colony were of the best type. The New England colonies had the advantage that their immigrants came in large part from dissenters from the Established Church of England. They came for "conscience sake," however, and with their concept of theocratic government the New England colonists could make it difficult indeed for immigrants they did not welcome. After Roger Williams had been exiled to Rhode Island and a few Quakers had been hanged on Boston Common, it was made clear to Baptists and Quakers, to Anglicans and to witches that Virginia was a more favorable climate for them than Massachusetts.
In contrast to New England, Virginia was founded and developed as a cross-section of the whole life of the British Isles, with its evil as well as its good; with ideals of freedom of thought which made no attempt to control a man's conscience; and with an ever growing concept of self-government and human freedom as already developed during nearly a thousand years and set out by the common law and the statute law of the race. Virginia was not founded upon any theocratic concept of government under the influence of a priestly class.
The life and community consciousness that developed in Virginia into the distinctive customs and ways of a well organized and firmly established commonwealth were necessarily different from those of the colonies in New England because of the differing conditions under which men lived. In the township system of New England a village normally became the township center and the people lived near enough to each other to enable them to meet frequently; to work and play together; to transact business; and to gossip of neighborhood affairs. In Virginia it was otherwise. In Virginia families lived on separate farms and each farm was of necessity a community within itself. Life was geared to the basic fact that tobacco was the money crop, and also was the real source of the financial strength and stability of the colony. Each family required a farm of sufficient acreage to raise tobacco as well as food-stuff and cattle; and throughout the whole colonial period the genius of Virginian life opposed the development of towns of greater population than was required for a shipping point and a warehouse, for the storing and grading of tobacco, and for a few agents of English and Scottish merchants.