In the sixth century one of the Irish tribes known as the Scotti or Scots, inhabiting the island then known as Scotia, but which we now call Ireland, crossed the Irish Sea and made a mass descent on the west coast of ancient Caledonia; and driving before them the Picts they found occupying the land, they settled down in possession of their newly conquered territory, covering roughly the present Argyle. Five centuries later the descendants of these invaders, having waxed mightily in power and numbers and become one of the four tribal kingdoms of Caledonia, united with the others, the Picts, British and Angles, to make the Kingdom of Scotland to which they gave their name and of which their history thenceforth was a part. Thus apparently their future destiny was fixed for all time in Scotland; but Providence had not forgotten them and had other plans.

In all Ireland, never renowned for its meekness nor pacification, there was in Elizabethan days and before, probably no part more constantly and consistently embroiled than the Province of Ulster. More or less continuous fighting between its people and Elizabeth's soldiers gradually wore down the Irish and their final complete collapse came in 1607 when their native princes, the Earls of Tyrconnel and Tyrone, deserted them and fled to the Continent. Thereupon the first James of England, having succeeded Elizabeth, declared all the lands of the Province forfeited and escheated to the English Crown, thus providing a convenient and legal basis for dispossessing the native Irish of their holdings, which the King thereupon undertook to repopulate with English and Scotch. But the English did not view the King's inducements with enthusiasm. Inasmuch as, in comparison with the Scotch, they "were a great deal more tenderly bred at home in England, and entertained in better quarters than they could find in Ireland, they were unwilling to flock thither except to good land such as they had before at home, or to good cities where they might trade, both of which in those days were scarce enough" in Ulster.[29] But the Scotch, many of them from Argyle found Ulster, their old homeland, to their liking and James, Scotch himself, seems to have preferred them for his purpose. They came in great numbers, took root immediately and soon were creating a peace and prosperity in the Province unknown there for many a long day, their ranks being later heavily augmented by Covenanters fleeing from the persecution of Charles I. But between these Presbyterian newcomers and the native Irish Roman Catholics, their neighbours, there was friction and hostility from the beginning which has lasted unabated to the present day.

Had the English government the wit and policy to have let this new settlement alone all would have been well; but the England of those days had yet to learn, from the costly experience of the American Revolution, that art of governing colonies in which she is today without peer. After the final crushing of the Irish at the Battle of the Boyne, in which the new Ulster population was of no small assistance, the English merchants grew jealous of the trade, manufactures and aggressive competition of the Province and in 1698 succeeded in obtaining from Parliament restrictive laws which all but ruined her industries, particularly in linen and woolen then, as now, outstanding. And now to the ruin of their trades was to be added religious coercion. Although, as we have seen, a Toleration Act had been passed for England in 1689, it was not until nearly one hundred years later that in 1782 the Toleration Act for Ireland became law. From 1704 on there was a great effort to force the Presbyterians of Ulster, as well as those of Scotland, to conform to the English Church and those who refused were forbidden to keep schools, marriages performed by their ministers were declared invalid and other civil disabilities were imposed. By 1719 the people of Ulster had been made desperate by this senseless interference and persecution and they, too, began to flock to America. As with the others, the movement, once started, grew rapidly and in this instance reached such proportions that it became by far the greatest immigration that, until the later day of steam, was to come to America's shores. Again Philadelphia appears to have been the chief port to receive them, as many as six shiploads landing there in one week alone. Before the emigration was eased by the Toleration Act and a generally saner attitude in England, it is estimated that half a million of the Scotch-Irish had crossed the Atlantic, carrying with them a deep resentment toward England, for which she later was to pay a heavy price in the stubborn and valiant support these people and their descendants gave to the American side in the war of the Revolution.

As most of these Scotch-Irish immigrants were very poor, many paid for their passage by selling their services and labour for a term of years, becoming a part of that flood of "indentured servants" which we shall soon consider. Fairfax Harrison in his Landmarks of Old Prince William vividly describes their advent and early distribution in the Northern Neck. As soon as the earlier arrivals had worked out their contracted years of servitude, Colonel Robert Carter, about 1723, began seating them around Brent Town and Elk Marsh. But as their numbers grew, they soon shewed a disinclination to become tenants, preferring to push further into the wilderness "where they could and did take up small holdings on the same terms that Colonel Carter took up his great ones and in that process they scattered."[30] Being too poor to purchase negro slaves and the supply of "redemptioners" or indentured servants by that time beginning to diminish, they bought the cheaper convicts for labourers and the Piedmont backwoods of the Proprietary acquired a reputation for turbulence and lawlessness to which both master and servant contributed his share. But they settled the land, planted tobacco and corn as persistently and relentlessly as did their more prosperous neighbours and in common with them laboured to develop the future Loudoun.

To understand the status of the "indentured servants," who were so numerous in the Virginia Colony and were such a large and important factor in the population of the Northern Neck, it is well to first consider the meaning of the term. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the word servant was not at all confined to one who was engaged in a menial task but broadly referred to anyone who, for compensation, rendered service to another and it was customary in all occupations, calling for especial training or instruction, to take on apprentices "bound to serve for a certain time in consideration of instruction in an art or trade"—the apprentice to be fed, lodged and clothed by the master during the term and to give his labour and services in compensation for his support and instruction. This custom obtained not only in the various crafts and trades but even in the professions as well, lawyers and doctors taking students on similar terms. In modern England the broader and older meaning of the word persists in the expression "civil servant" in reference to a government clerk or employé in what in America, too, is known as the Civil Service.

Virginia's agriculture was based on the cultivation of tobacco and corn—both hand-hoed crops, with practically no use whatever of the plow. As land was plentiful and the plantations increased in size, the great and pressing need was always for labor—and more labor. This system of indentured service in Virginia began very early and opened a great supply of labor not otherwise available. There were many in England of the poorer class and even of those once more affluent who had for one reason or another become the victims of misfortune and sought a fresh start in the colonies but were without the money to pay their passage. No small number of those who had become bankrupt became indentured servants. The severe English laws against debtors forced many to fly from that country and Virginia was a safe escape; for in 1642 a law had been passed in Virginia protecting these fugitives from their English creditors.[31] Little social stigma seems to have attached to the indentured servants as such. Frequently they lived with the family of their master, especially so when he was one of the smaller proprietors, and as they became proficient and earned their master's confidence they were often made overseers of their fellow workers. Although by far the greater demand was always for workers on the land, not all of them were so employed; some were artisans, some of the better educated became teachers and it was not unusual for the wealthier planters to seek and purchase these latter for that purpose. George Washington is said to have thus received his earlier schooling. As a whole, they appear to have been well and humanely treated in Virginia, or at least after the earlier days of their introduction, with little or none of the shocking brutality they are known to have met with upon occasion in Maryland, such as called for that Colony's legislation of 1664, 1681, etc.[32]

That there had been some earlier harshness, but more probably to convicts, is suggested by the effort made by Robert Beverley, in his History of Virginia, first published in 1705, to refute rumours of ill-treatment or undue hardship in the lives of these people which had been spread abroad in the England of his day. No doubt the writings of Defoe and other authors without personal knowledge of what they undertook to describe, had had their affect. "A white woman is rarely or never put to work on the ground, if she be good for anything else," Beverley declares and further on has this to say:

"Because I have heard how strangely cruel and severe the service of this country is represented in some parts of England, I can't forebear affirming, that the work of the servants and slaves is no other that what every common freeman does; neither is any servant required to do more in a day than his overseer; and I can assure you, with great truth, that generally their slaves are not worked so hard, nor so many hours in a day, as the husbandman and day labourer in England. An overseer is a man, that having served his time, has acquired the skill and character of an experienced planter, and is therefore entrusted with direction of the servants and slaves ... all masters are under the correction and censure of the County Courts to provide for their servants food and wholesome diet, clothing and lodging."

And again:

"If a master should be so cruel, as to use his servant ill, that is fallen sick or lame in his service, and thereby rendered unfit for labor, he must be removed by the churchwardens out of the way of such cruelty, and boarded in some good planters home till the time of his freedom, the charge of which must be laid before the next county court, which has power to levy the same, from time to time, upon the goods and chattels of the master, after which, the charge of such boarding is to come upon the parish in general.... No master of a servant can make a new bargain for service or other matter with his servant, without the privity and consent of the County Court, to prevent the masters over-reaching, or scaring such servant into an unreasonable compliance."