Where the Twain Meet

by Mary Gaunt

The colony desired bond-servants or, more probably, white inhabitants. Any shipmaster importing fifty white servants was freed from port charges on the ship for that voyage, but they had, observe, to be male servants. They didn't think much of women in the days of gallantry.

And others were welcome besides servants. “All tradesmen and others not able to pay their passages, except Jews, cripples, and children under eleven years of age, willing to transport themselves to this island shall be received on board any ship, and were free from any servitude.” The master received for anyone coming from England, £7, 10s.; from Ireland, £6; from New England, Carolina, and other parts of America, £3, 10s.; from Providence and the Windward Isles, £2. These sums were evidently paid to the shipowner through the master, for Lesley goes on to say that, for every person brought from Europe, the master “should have for his encouragement and to his own use the further sum of £1 per head, while those brought from America brought the master in 10s. ahead apiece.” And evidently these willing emigrants were set to work at once, for all rogues and vagabonds and idle persons refusing to work were to be whipped on the naked back with thirty-nine lashes, when presumably they took their place among the bondservants.

It wasn't very easy to get out of this country that was so lavish with its invitations to come and settle. Every shipmaster had to give security of £1000 not to carry off any person without leave of the Governor, and anyone wishing to get leave had his name set up for twenty-one days, and had to bring a witness who had known him or her for at least a year. It was even difficult to hide, for if a servant or hired labourer hid another man's servant or slave, he forfeited one year's service to the master or had thirty-nine lashes on the bare back.

And that is all I can find about these unwilling immigrants. Not one person that ever I heard of owns to having descended from them, and what is more extraordinary still, tradition does not point at any man as having among his forebears one who so arrived in the colony. All trace of them is lost. Naturally, perhaps. No one owns to a convict grandfather or great grandfather, even if the conviction were only for knocking down a rabbit.

Still, in after years, no one would have been ashamed at having a follower of Monmouth for an ancestor. But I have heard of none such. If these bond-servants died they were forgotten, and if they made good, as some must have done, they were absorbed into the population.

As the black slaves became commoner the value of the white bondsmen was enhanced, for the slaves were always a menace, and there was a law by which every owner of slaves had to keep one white man, servant, overseer, or hired man, for the first five working slaves; for ten slaves, two whites, and two whites for every ten more, and these had to be resident on the plantation, so that these bondsmen became either overseers or book-keepers, if they had not skill enough to be blacksmiths or carpenters. And then, I think, it was that the bondsman had his chance.

Book-keepers or artisans were not supposed, even when they were free men, to speak to the planter's daughter. Their social standing was by no means good enough, and it was a time when class differences were very marked.

But youth is youth, and if the girl had no hope of a lover among her own class, and indeed even if she had, I expect the good looking young bondsman was often encouraged by an arch look or a melting glance to a closer acquaintance. It ended—well in one way. She ran away with him, or possibly there was nowhere to run to, and a man cannot go far without money, so—the tropical nights are made for love-making. Presently, if the father and the mother were not wise, there was a scandal and some poor servant had ill-merited stripes.

But sometimes, I think, the planter was wise. Quite likely the bondsman, especially if he had been a political prisoner, was far better educated and better mannered than the girl running wild on the estate. Some provision would be made for the young couple, the lad would get his freedom, and in some house a little more sequestered in the hills, they would start housekeeping with a cane patch and black servants of their own.

This is entirely my own idea. I can find no record whatever of such a marriage. All trace of the bond-servants has vanished as completely as though they had never been, but this is the way I interpret Lesley's remark, “At last for the most part run away with the most insignificant of their humble servants!”