In June, 1661, the Council for foreign plantations considered the best means of encouraging and furnishing people for the colonies, and they thought that felons condemned for small offences, and sturdy beggars, might be sent. They had several complaints of men, women, and children being spirited away from their masters and parents, and later the Mayor of Bristol and the Lord Mayor of London petitioned the king for authority to examine ships, with the view of finding out whether the passengers went of their own free will. It was stated that husbands forsook their wives, wives fled from their husbands, children and apprentices ran away, while unwary and credulous persons were often tempted on board by men-stealers. Many who had been pursued by hue and cry for robberies, burglaries, and breaking prison, also escaped to the plantations. Certain persons, called spirits, inveigled, and by lewd subtleties enticed, away young persons, whereby great tumults and uproars were raised in London, to the breach of the peace and the hazard of men's lives. These abuses led to an Order in Council, published in September, 1664, for registering persons going voluntarily, and commissions were given to the Lord High Admiral and the officers of the ports to establish registration offices and give certificates. Yet the spiriting still went on, for in April, 1668, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper was asked to move the House of Commons to make the offence capital. His petitioner, said he, had found one lost child, and after much expense and trouble, freed him, but there were several others in the same ship, and other ships in the river at the same work. Even if the parents found their children, they could not recover them without money, and he was sure that if such a law were passed the mercy to these innocents would ground a blessing on those concerned in introducing it. This Act was finally passed on the 1st of March, 1670, punishing the spirits with death without benefit of clergy. There were, however, other means of procuring servants. In 1649, when Cromwell took Drogheda by storm, about thirty prisoners were saved from the massacre to be shipped to Barbados, and in 1651 seven or eight thousand Scots, taken at the battle of Worcester, were reserved for a similar fate. After the Restoration, however, there was an intermission in such supplies, and the planters began to look to Newgate and Bridewell for their labour supply.