WHITE SLAVES IN THE PLANTATIONS. 613 



and the remainder marched to Durham and shipped for North 

 America and the West Indies. How those who reached the 

 former country were disposed of we learn from Hutchinson's 

 Papers relative to the History of Massachusetts (Boston, 1769), 

 in which is a letter from the Rev. John Cotton to Oliver Crom- 

 well, as follows: "The Scots whom God delivered into your 

 hands at Dunbar, and whereof sundry were sent hither, we have 

 been desirous as we could to make their yoke easy. Such as were 

 sick of the scurvy or other disease have not wanted physic and 

 chirurgery. They have not been sold for slaves to perpetual 

 servitude, but for six or seven or eight years, as we do our own ; 

 and he that bought the most of them, I hear, buildeth houses for 

 them, for every four a house, and layeth some acres of ground 

 thereto, which he giveth them as their own, requiring them three 

 days in the week to work for him by turns and four days for 

 themselves, and promiseth as soon as they can repay him the 

 money he laid out for them, he will set them at liberty." 



The lot of these unfortunate Scots was pitiable enough, but it- 

 seems they were treated with far more consideration than their 

 follow-sufferers in the West Indies. In Massachusetts, too, to 

 judge from the foregoing letter, the purchaser could terminate 

 the period of slavery when he wished ; but in the West Indies 

 the banished were sentenced to specific terms of servitude which 

 could not be shortened ; and where no term was mentioned the 

 slavery was, before the law of 1681 (33 Charles II), for life. There 

 is still in existence in Jamaica a deed executed in the secretary's 

 office in November, 1671, between Robert Nelson and Thomas 

 Pitts, by which the former, in consideration of the sum of £10, 

 conveys to the latter and his heirs forever one white servant 

 named Stephen Ayliff. 



As we have said, Englishmen were likewise banished, and a 

 great many of the royalist party who took part in the abortive 

 rising of Wagstaff and Penruddock at Salisbury in March, 1655, 

 were sent to Jamaica and Barbadoes, with reference to whom 

 Carlyle says : " A terrible Protector this. . . . He dislikes shed- 

 ding blood, but is very apt to ' barbadoes ' an unruly man — has 

 sent hundreds and hundreds to Barbadoes, so that we have made 

 an active verb of it, ' barbadoes you.' " 



After the Restoration, Charles II did not scruple to use against 

 his political opponents a weapon which they had employed so 

 effectually against his party. The House of Commons which was 

 returned by the general election of 1661 revived the old ecclesiasti- 

 cal policy and recommenced the persecution of Nonconformists, a 

 series of penal statutes against them being passed and assented to 

 by the king, in spite of the promises he had publicly made, both 

 before and after his restoration, to grant liberty of conscience to 



