xxxviii              Introduction.

        before he had served four years. Allen's agreement “to make good” a service
        of five years was filed in court; the court awarded Smith 1500 pounds of
        tobacco for the seventeen months' service which he had paid for, but which
        had not been rendered. In the agreement for purchase, dated February 28,
        1669/70, Allen, the defendant, was therein described as “Jno Allen of London
        Mercht" (p. 504). This shows that the sheriff was a very recent arrival in the
        Province. Several releases from service are recorded. Thus, at the August,
        1674, court, Kelharn Magloughlin in open court freed George Spicer from any
        further service due him (p. 573). Some of these releases were doubtless ex-
        pressions of good will on the part of masters to deserving servants; or in some
        cases servants may have been released who were not worth their keep.
          An especially shady transaction is revealed in the suit of Thomas Darner,
        a servant, against his master John Cage, at the March, 1673, court. Cage had
        purchased Darner through Humphrey Warren, acting as the factor for an
        English merchant. Warren, a prominent planter, was, as will be shown later,
        also a dealer in indentured servants, and had been a former member of the
        court. Darner had, on August 1, 1668, indentured himself in England for four
        years to Thomas Tolson, a London merchant. It was shown that Warren,
        Tolson's factor in Maryland, had erased Damer's name in the indenture and
        substituted for his name that of another servant sold at the same time, leaving
        Darner without any written record of his four year indenture, and therefore
        liable, as a servant without an indenture contract, to serve the “customary”
        seven year term. A jury granted Darner his freedom, but the record does not
        disclose whether Warren was held responsible for the fraud (p. 492). At the
        June, 1673, court, Edward Typton, a servant of Warren's, doubtless urged on
        by Darner's success in gaining his freedom, petitioned the court, asserting that
        he had already served his full term, and asked that he be given his freedom.
        No details are given, but the court decided that his time had not yet expired
        (p. 502). A case which had come up a few years before, at the April, 1669,
        court, in which both Cage and Warren were also involved, shows Warren as an
        importer, or factor, for the sale of servants. Cage in this suit against Warren
        declared that he had provided board and lodging for eight of Warren's servants,
        obviously upon their arrival, for several weeks in the winter and spring of
        1669, and that Warren had refused to pay him. Cage asked the court to order
        the payment to him of such an amount “as to them seem meet.” For reasons
        not given in the record, possibly because there was no written contract, the
        court refused and nonsuited Cage (pp. 189-190).
          Two cases were heard involving great cruelty to servants. At the January,
        1669-70, court, Nicholas Emanson [Emerson], the innkeeper, brought suit to
        compel his servant, Elizabeth Hasell, who had run away several times, and, it
        was said, had not received “any correction”, to serve, as provided for in the act
        of 1671, the additional time during which she had been absent. Elizabeth asked
        for a jury trial. Six witnesses swore that they had seen her severely beaten
        by her mistress. One deposed that “she beat her & putt her in irons”; another
        that she “tyed her to her bed post & whipped her”; another that her mistress
        said that she had beat her for stealing a clout, and “that there was a puddle of