If, during the period covered by his indenture, the servant was guilty of some gross violation of its provisions, or if, in the absence of written covenants, he disregarded what was required of him by the custom of the country, he forfeited, at the expiration of his term, those benefits which, under ordinary circumstances, he received.[1] The courts, general and local, were rigidly scrupulous that the amplest justice should be done him in the payment of the articles due him when he became free. All agreements between his master and himself before his term had ended had, to acquire validity, to be acknowledged in the presence of a legal officer, and, in case such contracts were lacking in this sanction, his employer was deprived of the right to hold him longer, although many months of the period for which he had bound himself still remained unexpired. If he was detained beyond the limit of the time laid down by his indenture or by custom, his master was compelled to pay him in wages for this additional time. In one case, the General Court ordered that a hogshead of tobacco should be delivered to a servant whose term had thus been forcibly extended.[2]
A fair proportion only of those who were imported into Virginia as laborers acquired handsome estates and became prominent and influential citizens. Many Assemblies, after 1632, contained burgesses who had begun their career in the Colony by binding themselves out for a set period of time. In the early sessions of the legislature, the members who had at one time been servants or apprentices had been brought in as employees of the Company, and, through the grants of land which they received on the expiration of their terms, had acquired
