Moreover, when the servant had redeemed himself by working out his time, he received from his former master, as assistance to start out for himself "ten bushels of corn (which is sufficient for almost a year) two new suits of clothes, both linen and woolen, and a gun, twenty dollars value"; all of which were given to him as his due. He had the right to take up fifty acres of unpatented land and thereupon took his place, according to his merit and industry, in the free life of the Colony.
The system was necessary from the first; for if the servants had not been bound they promptly would have secured tracts of land to work for themselves, leaving those who had paid for their passage in the lurch. That it was advantageous to both master and servant is indicated by its growth. Its end in Virginia was caused by a cheaper labor supply having become available rather than from any lack of those seeking transportation. It has been estimated that, between the years 1635 and 1680, from 1,000 to 1,600 came annually to Virginia under its conditions and that from first to last not less than eighty thousand persons so arrived. But with the importation of negroes, beginning on a larger scale about 1680, the custom declined until by the middle of the eighteenth century, it seems to have practically ended in Virginia.
The transporting of convicts by England to her American Colonies—a far greater injustice to them than the later taxation by which they were lost to her—began early and was, in Virginia, at once and most vigourously opposed; but the everpressing demand for laborers seems to have rapidly modified the opposition, at least on the part of the larger proprietors whose power and influence was out of all proportion to their number; and it was not long before convicts were not only accepted without protest but even sought. It is the old story, in America as elsewhere, of a selfish economic advantage blinding those in power to the welfare of the State as a whole, although many continued to hold misgivings of the outcome. Thus we find Beverley in a later edition of his history, recording: "as for malefactors condemned to transportation, the greedy planters will always buy them, yet it is to be feared that they will be very injurious to the Country, which has already suffered many murders and robberies, the effect of that new law of England."[33]
But a loose assumption that all the convicts or prisoners arriving were moral derelicts, or those whose offense essentially involved moral depravity, and that the proportion these bore to others leaving Europe for Virginia fixes the ratio of their descendants or influence in the Old Dominion's later population, would be wholly and demonstrably untrue. We must be much more discerning and analytical than that and, as in another instance, look to our definitions.
The penal law of England, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was far more severe than today. Literally scores of offenses were punishable by death or transportation which today are either not crimes or, if still so considered, are punishable only by fine or imprisonment. Among the transgressions most severely dealt with, were purely political offenses; and a political offense was essentially to have picked the wrong side in the many religious, dynastic or civic disturbances of the period. After the various Irish upheavals of the seventeenth century—and that island, it may be said, was conquered by the English no less than three times within less than a hundred years—there was banishment or transportation of many of the losing side. The transportation was especially ruthless after Cromwell's operations and again, a generation or more later, after the Battle of the Boyne. But the Irish were not the only political victims. When the forces of Parliament defeated the Stuart followers, they condemned to transportation a goodly number of their opponents; treatment which was promptly reciprocated by the triumphant Royalists after the Restoration who meted out the same punishment to former Cromwellian soldiers and non-conformists as well. Again, after the abortive effort made in 1685 by the Duke of Monmouth to seize his uncle's crown, the vicious and bloody Jeffries and his colleagues, in their less frenzied moments, sentenced, as criminals, multitudes of the unfortunate followers of Monmouth to transportation to Virginia—there to be sold into as virtual slavery as any thug convicted of murder or highway robbery who had, in one way or another, been lucky enough to escape hanging. On arrival they sold for from £10 to £15 each; and we find the King adding his gentle touch to the work. "Take all care" wrote James to the Council of Virginia "that they shall serve for ten years at least; and that they be not permitted to return themselves by money or otherwise until that term be fully expired. Prepare a bill for the Assembly of our Colony, with such clauses as shall be requisite for that purpose." Thus the king; but in four years he has lost his throne and William III is issuing a full pardon for all political offenders.
Hence no small part of the convicts were unfortunates, rather than criminals, to our modern way of thought. But there remained a large and unpalatable number who had been convicted of crimes of all degrees and in their ranks were found a motley crew ranging from the lowest type of profligate, whose escape from the noose had been a public misfortune, to the minor offenders punished for a first violation of law. However even this evil residue was fated to leave but a minor contamination of the Colony's bloodstream. A great death-toll was taken by sickness on the transporting ships, particularly by the dreaded "goal distemper" as it was called. Those who survived the voyage naturally received far less consideration from their purchasers than was accorded the indentured servant; the unaccustomed climate took its quota and all in all the mortality was very great. Of those who outlived their period of servitude, some rose to positions of trust; many of the incorrigibles soon made the Colony too hostile for their comfort and took themselves off either voluntarily or as fugitives—sometimes to the more remote and unseated parts of Piedmont or, more generally, to the North Carolina backwoods, a favorite refuge for the dregs of Virginia's Colonial population. And at length, in 1740, came an opportunity for a great and general house-cleaning. In raising the Virginia levies for the ill-fated expedition against Carthagena, many a convict was pressed into service and, in the disasters attending that adventure, ended his turbulent career. But unfortunately the polluted stream continued to pour in on Virginia's shores until after the Revolution.
An unduly large proportion of these undesirables appears to have found its way into the backwoods of the Northern Neck which, in 1730, Governor Gooch described as "a part of the Country remote from the Seat of Government where the common people are generally of a more turbulent and unruly disposition than anywhere else, and are not like to become better by being the Place of all this Dominion where most of transported Convicts are sold and settled."[34] One may, without an undue straining of the imagination, discover the descendants of some of these people in modern Loudoun's small lawless element.
The negro slaves were practically confined to the eastern and southern parts of Loudoun. They were all but unknown in the German Settlement and the Quakers as a sect were so opposed to the very institution of slavery that, as early as the eighteenth century, the Society in America reached the decision to disown any member thereof who held slaves.
In all this varied assortment of population, it is a tribute to the natural leadership of the Tidewater Virginian that he maintained his supremacy and control. From him the county inherits all that is best and most attractive in its social life—the courtesy of its people, the unfailing hospitality, the love of social intercourse, the ardour for outdoor sports, particularly the devotion to horses, dogs and fox-hunting, all of which so definitely distinguish it today and contribute to the outstanding and well-recognized charm of its life.