Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/644

 position, and his commission was addressed to the Duke of York, as the warden of the Cinque Ports, as well as to those in command of other ports in the kingdom. Not only was the new officer required to preserve a record of the names, ages, places of birth and residence of all who proposed to emigrate to America in the character of servants, but also the full tenor of their stipulations and covenants, and the acknowledgment that they had left the English shores with their own consent. Certificates of this fact, bearing his official seal, were delivered by the Register to the merchants by whom the servants were to be forwarded. The establishment of the Registry, although in its nature well calculated to enforce the object it had in view, did not prove entirely effective in removing the evil against which it was directed. The traders supplying the Colonies found it necessary in 1670 to offer a second petition, in which, after repeating their expression of abhorrence of the profession and practice of the spirits, they begged that new rules might be adopted to protect them in their business of supplying the plantations with laborers. This led to the passage of an Act of Parliament providing that all who were found guilty of stealing and transporting children and adults should be punished with death without benefit of clergy.

Not even this extreme penalty could put a stop to the mischief. Ten years after this Act became a law, it was stated that ten thousand persons were annually spirited away from the kingdom by the arts of kidnappers. An order of council issued in 1682 reveals the prevalence of