The obligation of the master to a servant-owning and slave-owning community was recognized in North Carolina in a positive law prohibiting a master from setting free a negro or mulatto on any pretence whatsoever, except for meritorious services to be judged and allowed by the County Court, and even in this case a license was to be previously obtained.[138] In Massachusetts Bay servants were not to be set free until they had served out their time.[139] In Connecticut a slave set free was to be maintained by his master if he came to want.[140] In view of all these restrictions on servants of a personal, industrial, and political character it seems strange that even any from their number should have been able, at the expiration of their term of service, to break away from the spirit of this bondage and reach a higher position in the social scale; yet many of the redemptioners became in time, especially at the North, respectable and even prominent members of the community.[141] The women often married planters[142] and in turn became the employers of servants. Yet these are the exceptions. For a long time the redemptioners were considered the off-scourings of English cities, and they formed a distinct class in the social order lower than their masters or employers. In view of this fact, a reproach was of necessity attached to all belonging to the class and to the designation applied to them. Their descendants ultimately formed the class of poor whites,—the lowest stratum in the social order whose members were held in contempt even by the negroes. It has been said that the redemptioners were found in all the colonies, though they were more numerous in the Middle and Southern colonies than in New England. But it was difficult to keep white servants for any length of time in a country where land was cheap and the servant soon in turn became a master.[143] It was undoubtedly this difficulty that led to the substitution for white servants of Indians and negro slaves. Indian servants were apparently more numerous in the New England colonies, while negro slavery gained its strongest foothold in the South.