There was great competition to secure white labour in the American plantations. Infamous touts circulated amongst the poor, and any who were starving or wished for personal reasons to emigrate engaged themselves with a ship-master or an office-keeper to allow themselves to be sold for a term of years in return for their passage money. On arrival at their destination these poor wretches were sent to the plantations and lived as slaves until the term for which they had contracted had expired. In Virginia and Maryland, where most of them went, they were driven to work on the tobacco fields with the negroes, and were worse treated than the blacks, as being only leasehold property whereas the negroes were freehold.
Captain Edward Low was one of the bloodied of the pirates. He served under Lowther until 1722, when he smarted on his own account. After many atrocities he was taken by the French and hanged, some time in 1724. A full account of him is given in my edition of Johnson's History of the Pirates, issued in the same series as the present volume.
Belsize House was opened as a place of amusement, about 1720, by a certain Howell, who called himself the Welsh Ambassador. At first it was a fashionable resort, but it soon became the haunt of gamblers and harpies of both sexes.