Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/634

 must have shown little alacrity in coming to their assistance.

The larger proportion of the servants in Virginia in the seventeenth century who were imported into the Colony after being guilty of offences against the law in England, were simply men who had taken part in various rebellious movements. This class of population, so far from always belonging to a low station in their native country, frequently represented the most useful and respectable elements in the kingdom from which they came; it was no crime for Irishmen to defend their soil against the tyrannical intrusion of Cromwell, or for disaffected Englishmen and Scotchmen to rise up against the harsh and cruel measures of Charles II and James II. It was the men who loved their homes and were devoted to their church that led these movements, and their followers, in spite of ignorance and poverty, shared their courage, their steadfastness, and their patriotism. Banishment as a punishment for political offences seems to have been first employed by the authorities of the Commonwealth. It was enforced only in those cases in which, according to the strict provisions of the law, death could be inflicted, and it was, therefore, in mitigation of the extreme penalty. Even a disciplinarian as stern as Cromwell shrank from the slaughter of all the prisoners who were taken with arms in their hands. After the fall of Drogheda in September, 1649, the officers were deliberately butchered in cold blood, every tenth man was shot, and the survivors were shipped across the Atlantic. In the winter of 1649-50, two vessels set out from London having on board a number of political prisoners who were designed for the plantations in Virginia. After the defeat of Charles II at Worcester, his soldiers who were