The first distinct notice of transportation is to be found in the 18th of Charles II., c. 3, which gives the judges power, at their discretion, to execute, or transport for life, the moss-troopers of Cumberland or Northumberland. The punishment was inflicted very frequently, in an illegal manner, up to the reign of George the First, when its operation was extended and legalised.
Defoe, who always drew the outlines of his stories from actual life, no doubt gives a true picture of the life led by the convicts in the American plantations in his "History of Moll Flanders."
During the reign of James the Second, transportation, or rather reduction to slavery, was a favourite, and to certain parties a profitable, punishment.
Dr. Lingard quotes a petition setting forth that seventy persons, apprehended on account of the Salisbury rising of Penruddock and Grove, had, after a year's imprisonment, been sold at Barbadoes for 1,550 lbs. of sugar a-piece, more or less, according to their working faculties. Among them were divines, officers, and gentlemen, who were represented as "grinding at the mills, attending at the furnaces, and digging in that scorching island, whipped at whipping-posts, and sleeping in sties worse than hogs in England."[1]
After Argyle's defeat the planters were on the alert to obtain white slaves, and were successful, Some of the common prisoners, and others, who were Highlanders, were by the Privy Council delivered to Mr. George Scott, of Petlockey, and other planters in New Jersey, Jamaica.
After Monmouth's rebellion, Lord Sunderland wrote from "Winser, Sept. 14th, 1685, to Judge Jeffries," to acquaint him from the king that, of such persons as the judge should think qualified for transportation, the following individuals were to be furnished with these numbers:—Sir Philip Howard to have 200 (convicts); Sir Richard White, 200; Sir William Booth, 100; Mr. Kendal, 100; Mr. Nipho, 100; Sir William Stapleton, 100; Sir Christopher Musgrave, 100; a merchant, whose name Lord Sunderland did not know, 100. Thus it was proposed to give away 1,000. The King directed Chief Justice Jeffries to give orders for delivering the said numbers "to the above persons respectively, to be forthwith transported to some of his Majesty's southern plantations, viz., Jamaica, Barbadoes, or any of the Leeward Islands in America, to be kept there for the space of ten years before they have their liberty. In the end, eight hundred and forty-nine of Monmouth's followers, all from the west, were sold."[2] Macaulay's account of the traffic between the maids of honour and the relatives of
- ↑ Lingard, xi. 143.
- ↑ Roberts "Duke of Monmouth," vol. ii. p. 248.
