PRIMARY DOCUMENT

“Masters of Ships to provide fower months provisions” (1662)

ORIGINAL IMAGES
Hening's Statutes at Large
CONTEXT

In this law, “Masters of Ships to provide fower months provisions,” passed in its March 1662 (New Style) session, the General Assembly addressed the problem of indentured servants not being treated properly during their passage from England to Virginia.

Author: General AssemblyTranscription Source: William Waller Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia from the First Session of the Legislature in the Year 1619 (New York: R. & W. & G. Bartow, 1823), 2:129.

FULL TEXT

Hening's Statutes at Large

Hening’s Statutes at Large, Volume 2, Page 129

BEE it enacted that all masters of ships shalbe obleidged hereby to provide fower months allowance of victuals for passengers at their setting forth from the Downes or other parts of England, and to give the passengers suffitient allowance of dyett all the voyage, and masters of ships respectively to take care that poore servants doe not want cloaths and bedding in the voyage, in which perticulars aforesaid if any shall offend, they shalbe lyable to greiveous censure here according to the meritt of the offence.

FURTHER READING

“An Acte towching dyvers Orders for Artificers Laborers Servantes of Husbandrye and Apprentises” (1563) Laws Concerning Indentured Servants (1619) Law Regulating Indentured Servants (1642–1643) Law Regulating Marriage of Indentured Servants (1642–1643) Law Prohibiting Indentured Servants from Hiring Themselves Out (1642–1643) Irish Servants (1654) “Concerning Hireing of Servants” (1657–1658) “Concerning secret Marriages” (1657–1658) “How long Servants without Indentures shall Serve” (1657–1658) “An Act for repealing an Act for Irish Servants” (1659) “Women servants gott with child by their masters after their time expired to be sold by the Churchwardens for two yeares for the good of the parish” (1662) “Man Servants getting any bastard child to make satisfaction to the parish after their service ended” (1662) “Women servants whose common imployment is working in the ground to be accompted tythable” (1662) “An act for the more effectuall suppressing the severall sins and offences of swaring, cursing, profaineing Gods holy name, Sabbath abuseing, drunkenness, ffornication, and adultery” (1691) “An act for punishment of ffornication and seaverall other sins and offences” (1696)

CITE THIS ENTRY
APA Citation:
General Assembly. “Masters of Ships to provide fower months provisions” (1662). (2020, December 07). In Encyclopedia Virginia. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/masters-of-ships-to-provide-fower-months-provisions-1662.
MLA Citation:
General Assembly. "“Masters of Ships to provide fower months provisions” (1662)" Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities, (07 Dec. 2020). Web. 08 Dec. 2023
Last updated: 2020, December 07
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