The docks of seventeenth century London and Bristol funneled yeomen, thieves, whores, and stolen children by the thousands onto tiny, crowded ships bound for Virginia. For decades, second sons of lesser nobility, merchant’s factors, and land speculators herded sickly throngs aboard, betting that the purchase of these laborers and their landrights would establish them as wealthy planters in the New World. Governor Berkeley of Virginia called them all “a wild beast multitude.”

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