[31] Some improvement was soon seen in Virginia. “There haue beene sent thither this last yeare, and are now presently in going, twelue hundred persons and vpward, and there are neere one thousand more remaining of those that were gone before. The men lately sent, haue beene most of them choise men, borne and bred vp to labour and industry.” _Declaration of the State of the Colonie and Affairs in Virginia_, 1620. Force, III., 5. Hammond in _Leah and Rachel_, p. 7, also speaks of the improvement. [32] A well-known case was that of Thomas, son of Sir Edward Verney, who at the age of nineteen wished to marry some one of lower rank than himself. He was sent to Virginia to prevent the marriage, not, however, as himself a servant. _Verney Papers, Camden Society Publications_, vol. 56, pp. 160-162. A niece of Daniel DeFoe is said to have been sent to America as a redemptioner for the same reason. The Sot-Weed Factor says of a maid in a Maryland inn, “Kidnap’d and Fool’d, I hither fled, To shun a hated Nuptial Bed, And to my cost already find, Worse Plagues than those I left behind. These are the general Excuses made by _English_ Women, which are sold or sell themselves to _Mary-land_.” p. 7. [33] James Annesley when twelve years old was transported to Pennsylvania. His father died soon after, and his uncle succeeded to the peerage. The boy was sold to a planter in Newcastle County, but his title to the peerage was subsequently proved. Anglesea Peerage Trial, Howell, _State Trials_, XVII., 1443-1454. [34] Neill, _Virginia Carolorum_, p. 108; _The Verney Papers, Camden Society Publications_, vol. 56, pp. 160-162, give a long and detailed account of the method of obtaining and transporting servants. [35] Neill, _Terra Mariæ_, pp. 201, 202, “In better Times, e’re to this Land, I was unhappily Trapann’d.” _Sot-Weed Factor_, p. 6. A young woman in search of employment was told that by going on board ship she would find it in Virginia, a few miles below on the Thames. Another young woman was persuaded to enter the ship, and was then sold into service. Cited by Bruce, I., 614, from _Interregnum Entry Book_, vol. 106, p. 84, and _British State Papers, Colonial_, vol. XIII., No. 29, 1. The evil of “spiriting away” both children and adults became so great that in 1664 the Committee for Foreign Plantations interposed, and the Council created the office of Register, charged with the duty of keeping a record of all persons going to America as servants, and the statement that they had voluntarily left England. This act was soon followed by another fixing the penalty of death, without benefit of clergy, in every case where persons were found guilty of kidnapping children or adults. But even these extreme measures did not put an end to the evil; and it is stated that ten thousand persons were annually kidnapped after the passage of the act. Bruce, I., 614-619.