“In the Winter time, which lasteth three months (viz.), December, January, and February, they do little or no work or employment, save cutting of wood to make good fires to sit by, unless their Ingenuity will prompt them to hunt the Deer, or Bear, or recreate themselves in Fowling, to slaughter the Swans, Geese, and Turkeys (which this Country affords in a most plentiful manner): For every Servant has a Gun, Powder and Shot allowed him, to sport him withall on all Holidayes and leasurable times, if he be capable of using it, or be willing to learn.”[44]
Hammond also says of Virginia:
“The Women are not (as is reported) put into the ground to worke, but occupie such domestique employments and houswifery as in England, that is dressing victuals, righting up the house, milking, imployed about dayries, washing, sowing, &c. and both men and women have times of recreations, as much or more than in any part of the world besides.... And whereas it is rumoured that Servants have no lodging other then on boards, or by the Fire side, it is contrary to reason to believe it: First, as we are Christians; next as people living under a law, which compels as well the Master as the Servant to perform his duty; nor can true labour be either expected or exacted without sufficient cloathing, diet, and lodging; all which both their Indentures (which must inviolably be observed) and the Justice of the Country requires.”[45]
A Glasgow merchant under date of January 19, 1714, also writes: “The servants are all well cloathed and provided with bedding as ye will see,” adding that some servants prefer “Mariland, the reason whereof is that Virginia is a little odious to the people here.”[46]
But these enthusiastic descriptions must be taken cum grano salis. The object of Alsop’s book was to stimulate emigration to Maryland, as is evident from the dedication to Lord Baltimore and to “all the Merchant Adventures for Mary-land.” The object of Leah and Rachel was the same, and others who wrote in a similar strain had evidently little personal knowledge of the condition of the redemptioners. The real life is more truly portrayed in the accounts given by the redemptioners themselves, and many of these are preserved.
The Anglesea Peerage Trial brings out the facts that the redemptioners fared ill, worked hard, lived on a coarse diet, and drank only water sweetened with a little molasses and flavored with ginger.[47] Eddis says the redemptioners were treated worse than the negroes, since the loss of a negro fell on his master; inflexible severity was exercised over the European servants who “groaned beneath a worse than Egyptian bondage.”[48]
Richard Frethorne, writing from Martin’s Hundred, gives a pitiful tale of the sufferings of the indented servants. “Oh! that you did see my daily and hourly sighs, groans, tears and thumps that I afford my own breast, and rue and curse the time of my birth with holy Job. I thought no head had been able to hold so much water as hath, and doth daily flow from mine eyes.”[49]
The maid who waited on the Sot-Weed Factor says:
“In better Times, e’re to this Land,
I was unhappily Trapann’d;