In due course of time appeared fair-haired
children, blue or gray of eye, with all England behind them, yet
native-born, Virginians from the cradle.
Colonists in number sailed now from England. Most ranks of society and most
professions were represented. Many brought education, means, independent
position. Other honest men, chiefly young men with little in the purse,
came over under indentures, bound for a specified term of years to settlers
of larger means. These indentured men are numerous; and when they have
worked out their indebtedness they will take up land of their own.
An old suggestion of Dale's now for the first time bore fruit. Over the
protest of the "country party" in the Company, there began to be sent each
year out of the King's gaols a number, though not at any time a large
number, of men under conviction for various crimes. This practice
continued, or at intervals was resumed, for years, but its consequences
were not so dire, perhaps, as we might imagine. The penal laws were
execrably brutal, and in the drag-net of the law might be found many merely
unfortunate, many perhaps finer than the law.
Virginia thus was founded and established. An English people moved through
her forests, crossed in boats her shining waters, trod the lanes of hamlets
builded of wood but after English fashions. Climate, surrounding nature,
differed from old England, and these and circumstance would work for
variation. But the stock was Middlesex, Surrey, Devon, and all the other
shires of England.
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