The white bond-servant was valued at about 2,200 pounds of sugar, very little less than the slave for life, although he had generally but five years to serve. The cost of transport was about £5 per head; it followed, therefore, that if the London agent got his prisoners cheap he made a good profit. There was also another way of making money in this business. Some of the gaol-birds had friends who were willing to pay good sums on consideration that the convict should be virtually freed on his arrival. Many a sum of fifty pounds was obtained in this way, sometimes without helping the bond-servant in the least. How were the relations to prove that the promise had not been fulfilled, and if they did so what redress could be obtained? They certainly could not go to law, as the whole transaction was illegal. We have seen how Charles the Second tried to people Jamaica with free settlers, but this did not prevent the transportation of criminals. In 1665 four young men, who had been convicted of interrupting and abusing a preacher, were whipped through the streets of Edinburgh and afterwards sent to Barbados, and in 1684 some of the Rye House plotters were reprieved on condition that they served ten years in the West Indies. When these plotters arrived in Jamaica, the Governor, "by His Majesty's command," directed the Assembly to pass an Act "to prevent all clandestine releasements or buying out of their time," so that their punishment should not be evaded. But it was after the Monmouth rebellion, in 1685, that the greatest deportation took place. The miserable followers of the duke were executed by Judge Jeffreys until even his thirst for blood was somewhat slackened, when the remainder were sent to the plantations. The story of one of these unfortunates gives such a graphic picture of the life of a bond-servant that we cannot do better than give an outline of the "Relation of the great sufferings and strange adventures of Henry Pitman, surgeon to the late Duke of Monmouth." Having been taken prisoner after the battle of Sedgemoor, he was committed to Ilchester Gaol, had his pockets rifled, his clothes torn off his back, and was remanded until the Wells assizes. While in gaol he was inveigled into telling all he knew, by promises of pardon, and then his acknowledgments were treated as a confession. Those who pleaded not guilty on the first day of the trial were convicted and executed the same afternoon; others who confessed were equally condemned. After two hundred and thirty had been hanged the remainder were ordered to be transported to the Caribbee islands, of whom Pitman was one. With some others, including his brother, he was disposed of to an agent who took £60 from his friends to set him free on his arrival at Barbados.