"7 November, 1655.â€â€Recognizances, taken before Tobias Lisle esq. J. P., of Henry Cox brewer and Richard Hickman carpenter, both of Oulstreete, in the sum of twenty pounds each; For the appearance of Christian Chacrett ah'as Sacrett at the next S. P. to be held for Middlesex at Hicks Hall 'to answeare the complaint of Dorothy Perkins whoe accuseth her for a spirit one that takes upp men woemen and children and sells them a-shipp to bee conveyed beyond the sea, having intised and inveagled one Edward Furnifull and Anne his wife with her infant to the waterside and put them aboard the shipp called The Planter to bee conveyed to Virginia.'â€â€Also, similar Recognizances, taken on 9 November, 1655, before the same J. P., for the appearance of Thomas Orpitt alias AUpitt at the same S. P. at Hicks Hall to answer the charge of Dorothy Perkins, who accuses him in like manner of being 'a spirit,' and of having inveigled the same Edward Furnifull, his wife and her infant, and put them on board the ship The Planter for transportation to Virginia. S. P. R., 10 Dec, 1655." (4)
Edward, his wife Anne, and their child were spirited on board the ship The Planter. Officials discovered this turn of events and this family may not have actually emigrated. Kidnapped.
(1) Marcus Wilson Jernegan, Laboring and Dependent Classes in Colonial America, 1607-1783 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1931), 50.
(2) Rebekah Ann Buck, “The Decline of Indentured Servitude in Seventeenth-Century Tobacco Colonies†M.L.S. Thesis, University of Oklahoma, 2000, 76, quoting Peter W. Coldham, "The 'Spiriting" of London Children," The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 83, No. 3 (July 1975): 283.
(3) Clinton M. Dunning, "Servitude and Crime in Colonial Virginia," M.A. Thesis, University of Wyoming, 1955, 11, citing Jernegan, 50.
(4) John Cordy Jeaffreson, Middlesex County Records, Vol. 3 (London: The Middlesex County Records Society, 1888), 239.
(5) Peter Wilson Coldham, "The 'Spiriting' of London Children to Virginia: 1648-1685," The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 83, No. 3 (July 1975): 281.