Introduction.               xxxv




        The case of William Hide v. William Nicholls shows that, even when a man
      had his transportation paid by someone else, he might well bring in a quantity
      of goods. Nicholls said he had brought in Hide and another man and three
      women and several parcels of goods, and he got the Court to order Hide to
      pay for his passage and go free. Hide and the other man could not agree on
      the division of the goods, so they left it to an umpire, Charles Boteler. When
      the goods were replevyed from Nicholls, who had taken them as security for the
      payment of the passage money, they were listed by the sheriff: two swords, two
      hogsheads, one chest, one trunk, a small cask, a featherbed and a blanket.
      Considering the small quantity of goods sometimes left to be divided by a
      will, this is a large store. The umpire gave Hide a hogshead, a hamper of
      bottles, two swords, a featherbed bolster and a quilt (ibid., 586-588).
        George Cooley gave bond to John Ingram to deliver him “two able men
      servants between the ages of twenty and thirty, and failed either to deliver
      the men or to pay the 6ooo pounds of tobacco according to the bond. Since
      the bond was for a sum twice the amount of the obligation, two men servants
      must have been worth 1500 pounds of tobacco apiece (post, 237-238). Mark
      Cordea, late of St. Mary's County, mayor of St. Mary's City, and planter
      (ibid., pp. 281, 443) was sued by James Nuthall to “render unto him One
      Negro man betweene the age of fifteen & twenty yeares of Sound and perfect
      limbs and body which to him he oweth and unjustly deteineth”. When the
      case came to trial, the defendant came not but made default, and the Court
      decreed that Ingram “recover against the said Marke the negro man as afore
      said as also” 840 pounds of tobacco for costs (ibid., 244-245). In a similar
      case, Ralph Dawson v. James Clayland, Dawson recovered, not the manservant
      he had covenanted for, but 3400 pounds of tobacco debt and 556 pounds
      more for costs (ibid., pp. 459-460). Two or three other cases came up, in
      which, like Dawson v. Clayland, the plaintiff recovered, not the servants con
      tracted for, but the value they would have had (ibid., pp. 461, 579, 598-599).
        Servants, indented or merely transported, could be treated like merchandise,
      and, as has just been shown, they often were so treated. At this time, however,
      there seems to have been little of the revolting cruelty that figures in the older
      records. Captain Thomas Bradnox, whose inveterate malice toward his servant
      women appears in previous volumes of the Archives (volumes XLI, pp. 500 ff.;
      LIV, passim), died late in 1661. There is only one case of the mistreatment
      of a servant, and oddly enough, it is not certain whether the servant was a
      man or a women. Marmaduke Semmes had been bound over for abusing and
      misusing his servant Vertu Avery, but, after the witnesses had all been examined
      the Court discharged him on payment of his fees (ibid., p. 49).
        Nor is there much trouble with runaway servants, though, of course the
      laws were still in force. As there were penalties against the runaways, so there
      were other and harder penalties against any persons who aided them. . Ser
      vants might be sentenced to serve additional time, up to ten times the number of
      days absent (Archives, II, p. 524), or they might be whipped on their bare
      backs, even if they were women. Free persons who persuaded servants to run
      away or “entertained” them were subject to both civil and criminal action.