ABSTRACT
The third roll was for sending of maids to Virginia to be made wives, which the planters there did very much desire, by the want of whom have sprang the greatest hindrances of the encrease of the plantation, in that most of them esteeming Virginia not as a place of habitation, but only of a short sojourning, have applyed themselves and their labours wholly to the raising of present profi t, and utterly neglected, not only staple commodities, but even the very necessities of man’s life, in regard whereof, and to prevent so great an inconveniency hereafter, whereby the planters’ mind may by fast tyed to Virginia by the bonds of wives and children, care has been taken to provide them young, handsome and honestly educated maids, whereof sixty are already sent to Virginia, being such as were specially recommended unto the Company for their good bringing up by their parents or friends of good worth; which maids are to be disposed in marriage to the most honest and industrious planters, who are to defray and satisfye, to the adventurers the charge of their passages and provisions at such rates as they and the adventurers’ agents there shall agree; and in case any of them fail through mortality it is ordered that a proportionate addition shall be made upon the rest. In furtherance of which Christian action, divers of the said adventurers had underwrit divers good sums of money, none under 8, whereby the whole sum of that roll did already amount to 800, as may appear by the subscriptions.
