of him a certificate of absolute freedom. If without this certificate the laborer should still receive employment, the person who gave it was exposed to such punishment as the Governor and Council should prescribe.[1] If the certificate offered was in reality a forgery, the servant or freeman incurred a heavy penalty for his crime. In 1676, when the insurrection had drawn away so many laborers from their masters, the Assembly provided that every planter who had in his employment a servant whose antecedents were unknown, and who had not been residing in the country nine months, should present a report to the nearest justice of the peace showing his age, stature, the place from which he came, and the length of time he had been in the country.[2]
There was one strong influence at work among the planters which was likely to have made the operation of these laws more effective than is the case in general with prohibitory statutes in communities recently settled. The very reasons moving those who entertained absconding servants or hirelings to enter into covenants with them in spite of their failure to produce the certificate demanded by the law, impelled the masters or first employers of the runaways to pursue and seize them and to bring them back to the estates to which they belonged. The scarcity of labor made it dear, and it was less expensive to follow a servant or hireling who had absconded than to replace him by the purchase of a substitute. The most important interests of the landholders were involved in the sanctity of the regulation, and there are innumerable indications in the county records that the penalty imposed for disregarding it was strictly enforced.[3]
