156 A, FE. Verrill—The Bermuda Islands. 568 
Governor Butler complained to the Company that they had treated 
him unfairly and unjustly in several particulars; one item is as 
follows :— 
“Because the tenne [laborers] that were sent him out of Newgate 
are a burthen unto him, because the men cannot worke, and if they 
could he hath no ground to place them on: neither will any hire 
them, because they came out of Newgate. The woemen are many of 
them. with childe and their Bastards to be be kept by him: both 
men and woemen are like to go naked or to bee cloathed by him.” 
The following passage from Governor Butler’s history (1622) 
further shows the character of many of the early inhabitants : 
“Twenty criminall prisonners brought to the barre, to the great 
discontent (as well as trouble) of the Governour, who plainely found 
thes unexpected ill fruicts of the misuse of his former wonted 
clemencye, that a wraunglinge and stiffnecked people, as the most of 
thes proved themselves (being, to say truth for the greatest part, 
improvidently and wreatchedly raked up out of the London kennells), 
wer not to be mannaged with so smoothe and gentle a snaffle as he 
(out of his naturall disposition) had thetherto employed, and, there- 
fore, openly professed himselfe happy, and a glad man that he was 
so shortly to leave them. And the rather he became fully assured 
hereof, by the cryeinge and outrageous crimes, that three of these 
foresayd prisoners wer nowe in hold for.” 
Population. 
The population during the first century is rarely given definitely, 
but can sometimes be estimated from the recorded taxes or levies of 
tobacco and corn. Governor Butler stated that when he left, in 
1622, there were about 1,500 people. 
At certain periods many persons migrated from Bermuda. Some- 
times this was on account of religious persecutions, as when Eleutheria 
was settled in 1649 by Bermuda dissenters or Independents, who 
shortly after nearly starved to death and were relieved by contribu- 
tions sent from New England and Bermuda, in 1650. 
But in other cases it seems to have been merely because they hoped 
to better their condition, for Bermuda early came to be overpopulated 
in proportion to its resources, as they then existed, 
In the “Orders and Constitutions ” adopted by the Bermuda Com- 
pany in 1622, article 212, it is stated that the Virginia Company had 
agreed to allow them a large tract of land in Virginia, on account of 
the small amount in Bermuda. Therefore, when Bermuda became 
