the colonies with servile labour from the prisons of the mother country. Scots captured at the battles of Dunbar and Worcester,[223] English, French, Irish and Dutch pirates lying in the gaols of Dorchester and Plymouth,[224] if "not thought fit to be tried for their lives," were shipped to Barbadoes, Jamaica, and the other Antilles. In August 1656 the Council of State issued an order for the apprehension of all lewd and dangerous persons, rogues, vagrants and other idlers who had no way of livelihood and refused to work, to be transported by contractors to the English plantations in America;[225] and in June 1661 the Council for Foreign Plantations appointed a committee to consider the same matter.[226] Complaints were often made that children and apprentices were "seduced or spirited away" from their parents and masters and concealed upon ships sailing for the colonies; and an office of registry was established to prevent this abuse.[227] In 1664 Charles granted a licence for five years to Sir James Modyford, brother of Sir Thomas, to take all felons convicted in the circuits and at the Old Bailey who were afterwards reprieved for transportation to foreign plantations, and to transmit them to the governor of Jamaica;[228] and this practice was continued throughout the whole of the buccaneering period. Privateering opened a channel by which these disorderly spirits, impatient of the sober and laborious life of the planter, found an employment agreeable to their tastes. An example had been set by the plundering expeditions sent out by Fortescue, Brayne and Doyley, and when these naval excursions ceased, the sailors and others who had taken part in them fell to robbing on their private account. Sir Charles Lyttleton, we have seen, zealously defended and encouraged the freebooters; and Long, the historian of Jamaica, justified their existence on the ground that many traders were attracted to the island by the plunder with which Port Royal was so abundantly stocked, and that the prosperity of the colony was founded upon the great demand for provisions for the outfit of the privateers. These effects, however, were but temporary and superficial, and did not counterbalance the manifest evils of the practice, especially the discouragement to planting, and the element of turbulence and unrest ever present in the island. Under such conditions Governor Modyford found it necessary to temporise with the marauders, and perhaps he did so the more readily because he felt that they were still needed for the security of the colony. A war between England and the States-General then seemed imminent, and the governor considered that unless he allowed the buccaneers to dispose of their booty when they came in to Port Royal, they might, in event of hostilities breaking out, go to the Dutch at Curacao and other islands, and prey upon Jamaican commerce. On the other hand, if, by adopting a conciliatory attitude, he retained their